Rigorous Devotion

Featuring a RECIPE, a brief pivot I hope you'll permit me.

I’ve been avoiding writing to you because I’m in my own head about how the beauty ecosystem works on the internet - I don’t particularly enjoy witnessing a hyperspeed feedback loop of devotion, skepticism, destruction over everything from mascara to concealer to vitamin C to sunscreen to petroleum to the Dyson Airwrap to. . . well, truly anything you have in your makeup collection. Everyone has to try something, have an opinion on something, and have an opinion on having the wrong opinion on something! To know every drama does not feel exciting to me, it feels puritanical. Even just as a witness of the comments, it reflects life in a prison of being Online Too Much - and to report on it to you feels like affirming that feedback loop in a way I don’t want to do. I do think knowledge is power - but I also know that power corrupts. And it has felt for many months that my relationship to beauty has been corrupted, so I’ve been doing some soul searching.

I’ve been spending my time obsessively deviating just a few parts of my routine to observe the results. I’m ordinarily a big picture person, which is why I have always enjoyed beauty: I can trace significance and context from a lip balm to the climate crisis in five seconds, but that can be a bummer (lol) - so I have directed that energy and curiosity instead to baking, to technique. I’ve been doing the same shortbread recipe for weeks, perhaps months, just adjusting the different ways to incorporate the butter into it. Here’s the recipe, if you’re curious:

Shortbread Cookies, modified from the Hedgebrook Cookbook

makes 3 dozen

• 2 C flour

• 1/4 tsp coarse salt

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1/2 C granulated sugar

• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

• 1 tsp culinary lavender buds

1. Sift flour and salt in a bowl and set aside.

2. Beat butter on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until fluffy.

3. Add sugar, vanilla and lavender buds, continue to beat about 2 minutes.

4. Add flour and salt, combine on low speed until flour is just incorporated and dough sticks together when squeezed with fingers.

5. On a sheet of wax paper, form the dough into log. Roll up, chill until firm, at least 1 hour.

6. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

7. Line cookie sheet, remove dough from fridge, unwrap and slice into 1/4 inch thick slices, place on sheet and bake for 17-20 minutes. Cool completely. Consume!!!

Hedgebrook is a wonderful writing residency and they provide you endless snacks, including these and other cookies in a personal jar in your cabin. I enjoy working through the cookbook as a way to stay close to my memories there from last year. But I am hyper fixated on this shortbread because it’s simple enough in construction to understand even as a novice how the slightest change makes all the difference. I’ve browned the butter instead of whipping it, I’ve beaten the butter for a shorter amount of time, a longer amount of time, I’ve made them without letting them chill for at least an hour, I’ve sifted every dry ingredient and sifted none of them. I can tell by taste how my decision made a difference, however miniscule. I write notes. I have cooking notes! To be able to tell is such a pleasure to me. I only ever make six cookies at a time, always fresh, which feels so decadent - to always have fresh cookies after dinner, the perfect amount for two people.

Honestly, it’s similar to the pleasure I’ve gotten from learning fragrance notes as a beauty writer. You learn by doing, by smelling variations constantly. I can tell by smell if a rose scent is a Turkish rose or otherwise, if it’s from a dark flower or a white or yellow bloom, because they all smell different, even if they’re all from roses. White and yellow roses smell more green, similar to violets, nasturtium, lemon. Lush, I would say. If you like a “traditional” rose fragrance, you likely prefer fragrances made from darker petals.

My friend gifted me custom fragrances for my birthday in January, and to listen to his explanation as to how he composed them was such a pleasure. There was such rigor in his process of deciding which flowers to use. He went and smelled all my favorite fragrances to get an idea of what I liked and deviated from their shared notes. He made me like rose, and I usually avoid rose notes. And he started from knowing nothing about fragrance! He’d never made fragrance before. He learned by doing it out of care and curiosity, and he did - truly - a great job. What a gift. He will read this, me bragging about him - and be so shy for the rest of the day, the whole week, maybe. But let me brag about you for a second, okay? It is special to have such a thoughtful and talented person as your friend. I’ve been thinking about all the ways I try to make people feel cared for, and that gift is inspiring to me. It requires attention, research, commitment, even knowing you might fail at what you’re doing. It requires devotion.

I am thinking about ways to restructure and repair my relationship to beauty in ways I can share with you. Thinking of ways to truly center beauty as a framework of care, not conceit and consumption. To underline how I see it as devotion to something - to a belief that we deserve care, we deserve to feel seen, and respected, loved, possibly, hopefully, improbably. I even avoided discussing de-influencing on the newsletter because it operates in the same dichotomy as influencing does, which is to say, it felt reactionary rather than authentic, just another way to judge and grab the algorithms approval. I don’t want to police, I don’t want to train suspicion, I want to center curiosity, care, excitement - the things that have always drawn me to beauty and to other things that sustain my body and spirit.

I don’t have the answers to how I can do that sustainably yet, so instead, I give you my shortbread recipe above. And to let you in on another experiment of mine I’m doing. I’m wearing every lipstick I own until I run out, writing notes on the day I wore it, kissing the paper on this little journal I’m keeping for it to note the shade. Today I’m wearing this dark red one that requires not only a lip pencil but a lip brush and a lip mask before application. A high maintenance choice to begin with, but one worth the devotion to. I have had it for so many years but have never paid it much attention. I want to pay beauty more attention, and so I start with a lipstick I’ve long ignored. I’m not doing it on social media as Content to Mine, but as a personal diary of my days. That difference is important to me right now.

(The aforementioned lipstick on the currently typing writer. My partner got me multiple birthday cakes just because they knew it would make me happy. For the record, I am a Capricorn, not a Pisces.)

I hope you are finding things worth your time, your commitment, your love. I hope if you don’t have it right now, the journey towards it is full of bliss and lessons worth sharing. I hope you’re warm! And I hope you try the shortbread.

Much love,

Arabelle