Bushwick Bachelor and Gym Lips
after school weekend edition
Hi friends! I’m writing to you from a flight to Austin, where I’ll be spending the weekend with college friends, eating tacos and soaking up the sun (it’s going to be 97 degrees!). There will be no letter on Monday because I’m traveling, but I’ll make up for it with a letter on Friday — expect a very special guest.
Today we’re looking at:
the $1,600 bag you won’t be able to escape this summer (we’ll also, totally coincidentally, get into how money is meaningless for this generation)
the TikTok trend that has everyone humblebragging about their glow-ups
what happens when your product goes viral for the wrong reason
a hyper local, hipster Bachelor
an excellent Jack Harlow meme
Before we get into the trends and links and meandering digressions: This week, the Nessie, the newletter from fintech health startup Ness, let me go on and on (and, I can’t emphasize this enough, on) about my favorite wellness items, including a life-giving massage pillow from Amazon and the running shoes that made my persistent knee pain disappear. Check it out.
And if you also want $1,000 to spend on wellness stuff, here’s your chance. This link ✨right here✨ gives After School subscribers 5x the entries for the next community Wellness Diaries. You have until May 16th to enter.
⚡ TikTok ⚡
Everything the TikTok girlies are buying this week: This pink satin Zara dress. Cargo pants. Tarte’s Maracuja Juicy Lip Plump. Saie Hydrabeam. Real Techniques Brightening Concealer Brush. Dior Lip Oil.
Gym lips — which is to say a specific lipstick routine for the gym — is the latest “makeup obsession” :( "It's basically an over-lined lip that I wear to the gym that's really natural, and it's randomly catching on.”
Jones Road, Bobbi Brown’s new company, recently had its foundation go viral on TikTok — but the bad kind of viral (if that even exists? all press is good press, etc.). The way I understand it, a makeup influencer applied the formula like your grandma might: heavy-handedly. “She grabbed her usual massive amount of product and spread it onto her face like she does with a full-coverage foundation,” a beauty reporter explained. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be worn. It’s supposed to be dewy! Natural! Everything Glossier wishes it was! All of this may sound dumb, but it does make you think about what happens when an influencer gets ahold of your product, uses it incorrectly, and publically hates on it.