Beauty for dogs, pull-up pubic hair and appearance inflation: 3 prolific beauty writers sum up 2025
By Leah Dolan, CNN
(CNN) — 2025 was a year of extremes in beauty culture. The $450 million industry felt more polarized than ever, with a push towards “low maintenance” routines that encouraged us to ditch our mascaras or go makeup-free entirely, Pamela Anderson style. The shift came from the fact that this low-effort look often required “high maintenance” treatments like lash lifts, teeth whitening, laser hair removal, or even cosmetic procedures, to be achieved. While some brands were telling us to “redefine beauty on your terms,” others were selling us compression face shapewear to sculpt our jaws.
The scope of beauty widened, too. In November, the Canadian actress and entrepreneur Shay Mitchell made headlines when she launched Rini, a skincare line that offers hydrogel sheet masks for children as young as 3. We also saw the rise of canine beauty, with vegan pH-balanced luxury shampoos infused with vitamins, coat oils and dry shampoos that double as doggie fragrance. No corporeal zone was off-limits either, as previously undiscussed body parts were platformed in new ways. The New York Times described scalps as the new “It” area as more people spent money on high-end head spas, while earlier this summer, Vogue Business declared the next wellness craze to be “booty beauty,” as more brands flock to create all-over-body deodorants, bottom care and “hole serums.” Kate Winslet summed it up best when responding to today’s beauty standards in a recent interview with The Times of London: “It is f***ing chaos out there.”
To help make sense of it all, CNN asked three prolific beauty writers to sound-off, unfiltered, on the moments they believe defined the year that was.
The year the beauty industry made you its Biche — Jessica DeFino
In 2025, with every inch of the human body commodified at last — see: “holecare” — the beauty industry set its sights on the nonhuman. Introducing: canine cosmetics, the break-out category of the year!
Lil Luv Dog, co-founded by the former COO of Kim Kardashian West Brands and backed by $1 million in venture capital, launched in August with $36, EWG-verified dry shampoo (“so your dog doesn’t smell… like dog”). Welltayl followed in October; its Skin + Coat Care Kit, $98, can “cleanse, hydrate and protect without disrupting the skin barrier.” Ex-beauty editor Alexandra Pauly will debut her “beauty for the beast” line, Biche, next month. The fur oil features a “signature fragrance” for “humans to smell and enjoy,” Pauly tells CNN.
And humans do seem to enjoy this. Morgan Stanley estimates the pet grooming industry will grow over 7% annually through 2030, potentially outpacing the growth of beauty products for people (5% annually through 2030, according to McKinsey & Company). Allure readers even asked for more “pet beauty content” in a 2025 survey.
But why?
I’d blame anthropomorphization, for starters. As more people opt out of parenthood, dogs are the new kids. Consider scented coat conditioner the “baby sheet mask” of fur babies.
Evolutionarily speaking, people also see themselves in their pups. Both species communicate through facial expressions, and dogs have developed new facial muscles over time — brow-furrowers, mainly — to better mimic their masters. (I pray Botox for bulldogs isn’t on the horizon.) Maybe this explains why Lil Luv Dog and Biche market their wares as “self-care for dogs,” despite the dog doing none of the care. The “self” is the owner; the person is sublimated into the pooch; the beauty industry has made you its bitch (uh, Biche).
Here’s my personal pet theory: The early modern invention of the pet coincided with the shaping of the modern family and women’s unequal status within it, as professor Juliana Schiesari argues in her 2010 book “Beasts and Beauties.” Women and dogs were domesticated together, in other words — made to be docile, to do as they’re told. As the country tightens the leash on women, could dog beauty be some sort of subconscious coping mechanism? A way to make peace with our own domestication?
At the very least, a “de-caninizing” beauty standard for dogs is a bleak parallel to today’s dehumanizing beauty standard for people (“Instagram Face,” cyborg-like skin, AI models). What’s next? Ozempic for Old English Sheepdogs? Well, yes. That is in the works.
Jessica DeFino writes the anti-beauty Substack newsletter “Flesh World.”
Cosmetic transparency and appearance inflation — Sable Yong
In 2025, people were a lot chattier about what aesthetic treatments and procedures they’ve undergone, what they’d like to have done, and also what they speculate certain celebrities have had done — many of whom have been happier than ever to disclose specifics on social media. Kylie Jenner responded to a TikToker asking for her “boob job recipe” (“445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!! silicone!!! garth fisher!!! hope this helps lol”) in a surprising attitude shift, considering Jenner had been evasive about her lip filler in the past. Her mother, Kris Jenner, also sparked media attention for her second facelift in 15 years, which was lauded online as impressively natural-looking, and spiked interest in such clinical terms as “SMAS lift” and “deep plane” — two facelift techniques associated with Jenner’s results. Perhaps more surprising was Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, who this year went public about her breast augmentation, lower blepharoplasty and earlobe reconstruction. She told PEOPLE Magazine: “I feel like nowadays with social media, you see everyone and you’re like, ‘Oh, my god, how does she look so good?’ Social media is not real, so that’s why I try to be as transparent as possible.”
The public’s overall sentiment was “wow, they look great” — a far cry from less than a decade ago, when plastic surgery was still quite socially stigmatized and misunderstood. Back then, frozen Botox face, cat-like cheek sculpting and exaggerated “duck lips” were the butt of jokes (until so many people adopted amalgamations of these features that they’ve since become part of the beauty standard lexicon). Considering our collective screen dependency, voyeuristic relationship with influencers and the increased accessibility of these procedures, it was only a matter of time before our distaste for overt vanity evolved into public curiosity. Now to admit one’s financial investment in their physical appearance — whether it was inspired by insecurity or ambition — is both vulnerable and relatable (relatability being one of the most effective ways celebrities create a sense of authenticity and connection with fans). Today, beauty transparency is framed as empowering, and surgery as self-care.
Ironically, this increased authenticity has raised the bar, and the pressure for everyone to keep up has never been greater. Now, as non-invasive treatments like Botox, fillers, laser facials, and manicures are all normalized in the mainstream, the baseline of acceptable appearances has become way more expensive — excluding people at a time of growing economic inequality as well. It’s made us skeptical of the beauty we see online as a result of medical intervention, paranoid that everyone else is getting injections and lifts, and further stigmatized what natural aging actually looks like.
But beauty evolves with humanity — it’s a key form of expression, and part of how we connect with each other. I think it can also be used as a tool of rebellion against a tech-driven culture that threatens to make us obsolete. Now that AI has us doubting everything we see online, I hope we’ll be drawn back to appreciating imperfect, unique human qualities. Maybe in 2026, we’ll all be fatigued with picture-perfect faces, and reconsider beauty’s real value for us individually and collectively.
Sable Yong is a freelance writer and was formerly a beauty editor at Allure. Her book “Die Hot With a Vengeance: Essays on Vanity” was published in 2024.
The full bush agenda — Alex Peters
It first started towards the end of last year, when a debate sprang up on TikTok over whether women with bushes were more trustworthy. In January, videos of users chanting the words “full bush in a bikini” went viral and quickly became a catchphrase for women resisting the societal pressure of body hair removal. By April the conversation had taken over an entire corner of the platform, now dedicated to pubic hair. #BushTok had influencers, memes, “bush aura readings” (predicting the style/design of a celebrity’s pubic hair based purely on vibes). People were bonding over shared acceptance and appreciation of their natural body hair, refusing to be embarrassed over something that has so long been considered taboo.
But it wasn’t just happening online. After the French luxury house Maison Margiela sent merkins down the runway last year, designers in 2025 presented collections with looks that referenced pubic hair from the faux fur high-cut bodysuit by the New York-based designer Kim Shui to Swedish label Acne Studio’s fuzzy all-in-ones. In October, for his first collection as the designer of Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink put models in hairy trompe-l’œil-style catsuits, while Kim Kardashian — who last year first teased us with a Skims faux fur bikini — fully committed with a range of merkins in various shades and hair types. Soon headlines were proclaiming the bush was back, “Saturday Night Live” was centering skits around bushes, they were appearing on the cover of magazines and US rapper Ashnikko was singing about not wanting a “city boy scared of the bush” on her 2025 single “Sticky Fingers.”
In truth, the full bush conversation has been a welcome bit of body positivity in a beauty landscape which has often felt very bleak, if not downright dystopian. As beauty director at Dazed, my work aims to challenge the pressures young people feel to conform to oppressive, unrealistic standards, and champion beauty as a joyful tool for self-expression. From blepharoplasty to buccal fat removal, it seems like there’s a new surgical treatment trending every week, many of them increasingly undetectable. Meanwhile, the “beauty backslide” has seen a cultural return to conservative values and aesthetics, worryingly thin bodies, and bizarre TikTok trends that border on physiognomy.
In a sea of skincare for toddlers, Botox in your 20s and facelifts for the barely 30s, it’s no wonder the pieces I commissioned on pubic hair (from meeting #BushTok influencers and exploring full bush fashion, to advice on growing out your bush) have been some of the most talked about pieces on the site this year.
These conversations around full bush positivity have often been lighthearted and full of humor, but that never took away from their importance. Accepting and embracing the natural aspects of our bodies feels increasingly hard to do and therefore never more vital. In a time where our appearances are being constantly modified (digitally and surgically), frozen, smoothed over and shrunk down, being part of the full bush agenda feels like an act of self-preservation.
Alex Peters is the beauty director at Dazed magazine.
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