A new podcast is hitting the digital airwaves. Created by two working beauty editors, their aim is to bring the very best beauty deskside conversations —and shenanigans—to the public.
“These were the kinds of conversations we were already having,” said Jessica Matlin, Deputy Beauty Editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. “At certain desksides there are those experts and brands that you just gravitate to, that you go well past the hour you have to talk with them, and their publicist’s knee is jerking up and down because they have to go to their next appointment. It’s all of the best things that happen at our day jobs that don’t make it onto the page or the web, which even though it has limitless space, needs to be a soundbite.”
Jessica had the perfect partner in Jennifer Goldstein, Executive Beauty & Health Editor at Marie Claire, to launch Fat Mascara, the name of their podcast, which will drop every Thursday.
Both had been podcast aficionados for some time (Marc Maron, Bret Easton Ellis, Another Round and Alec Baldwin are just a few faves) but they wanted a beauty podcast that would continue the fun and smart conversations they were having at work.
The first episode of Fat Mascara, called Childlike Glitter, launched Thursday February 25, and featured Rose Marie Swift, well-known in beauty circles as an extreme natural beauty guru, entrepreneur and founder of RMS Beauty. It also featured backstage beauty trends from Fashion Week. Jessica and Jen, in their tongue-in-cheek way, interject that Rose Marie is so natural she probably has a house made of coconut oil, and point out what most industry insiders know about interviewing hair stylist Orlando Pita in the heat of a backstage hair frenzy. “He can appear annoyed when asked about trends, which is understandable,” said Jessica during the podcast. Indeed, it’s considered a rite of passage to get the side eye from Orlando after asking such a mundane question—especially when he’s in the thick of it.
Fat Mascara is produced by Embassy Row, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, with locations in Manhattan and L.A. The firm also produces web series Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee (featuring Jerry Seinfeld) and Men in Blazers. For Fat Mascara, Jessica and Jen are the talent who plot and curate the content, which appears in 30-minute to 40-minute spots.
Future podcasts will include talks with makeup artists, hair stylists, beauty influencers, perfumers, celeb nail artists, dermatologists and brands, sharing the latest and greatest in beauty. Fat Mascara looks to be an ideal place for indie brands to talk shop and connect with consumers. The question is whether bigger brands will reveal themselves on the podcast.
“I think the bigger brands realize they need to be candid and open now, and if they aren’t people will see that. I think the more candid they are, the better they’ll do. Big brands have a lot to say. CEO’s and marketers now have this great platform where they can be themselves,” Jessica said.
Lastly—the ultimate question: where did the name Fat Mascara come from?
“We had a list of a million names. Beauty Talk or Beauty Chat and beauty this and that. It all seemed so boring. One day we wrote down fat mascara, and we just kept going back to it. The producers really liked it so it stuck. It comes from the idea that the beauty industry can be silly and is always doing something bigger and better. Think about mascaras and how each year they’re bigger, fatter and have all this technology. Soon they’ll have hydraulics to lift lashes and we’ll need to use both hands to lift them.”
Listen to Fat Mascara through iTunes, Soundcloud or through the website,
fatmascara.com. While an edit calendar is in the works, “which is very organic right now,” Jessica and Jen are accepting pitches at info@fatmascara.
