Molly Stern makes pre-makeup skin prep feel tactile, practical, and alive.
Molly Stern's skin-prep method gives this Fat Mascara conversation its cleanest shape: a finished face starts with circulation, slip, and patience.

Beauty culture, with personality.
Fat Mascara treats beauty as a culture beat, not just a shopping list. Its conversations move from makeup technique and skin prep to branding, editor lore, influencer behavior, and the strange little rituals that make products matter.
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Fat Mascara covers beauty like a living social world. It is not only about what to buy, though products are everywhere. It is about who makes taste, who sells it, who copies it, and why a lip color or face wash can suddenly carry a whole identity. The show moves quickly. A conversation can start with a nostalgic check-in, pivot into a serious interview question, detour through brand gossip, and end with a very specific product recommendation. That restlessness is part of the appeal. The episodes in this run show a format with several gears: Business Desk for branding and market talk, Newsroom for editor-world conversation, Artist Salon for makeup artistry, and recurring product segments built around listener feedback. Molly Stern brings the practical craft side, with skin prep, tools, oils, and the slow work behind a camera-ready face. Camille Moore pushes the conversation toward world building, community, and what separates branding from ordinary marketing. Andrea Laventhal gives the show room to talk about beauty editors, aging, appearance pressure, and the comic precision of the “Greenwich Mom” mindset. Older episodes with Jen Sullivan and Jessica Matlin add a strong sense of shared history, including the show’s long run, its inside jokes, and its emotional relationship with the beauty community. Fat Mascara can be affectionate without going soft. It is happy to celebrate a great gloss, a smart founder, or a beloved guest, but it also keeps one eyebrow raised at quiet luxury, dupe culture, influencer trips, and every brand story that starts to feel too polished. The result is a beauty show with texture. It has enough service to be useful, enough insider context to feel informed, and enough banter to keep the industry from sounding self-important. The strongest through-line is curiosity about why beauty matters to people beyond the mirror. That makes Fat Mascara feel less like a trend report and more like an ongoing conversation among people who know the category, love parts of it, and still want to argue with it.
Made for: For listeners who follow beauty products, editors, makeup artists, founders, influencers, and brand drama with equal interest. It suits people who want practical recommendations, but also want to know why the industry behaves the way it does.
What sets it apart: Fat Mascara has the archive, access, and lived-in beauty literacy to make interviews feel specific rather than promotional. It treats products as culture signals, business decisions, and personal rituals all at once.
Fat Mascara has been leading the conversation about beauty and beyond since 2016. Join veteran journalist and retail insider Jessica Matlin (of Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, W, Moda Operandi) as she sits down with celebrities, artists, executives, doctors, perfumers, writers, and more, allowing these experts to share their insider knowledge, but also express themselves in ways never heard before. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Fat Mascara makes beauty culture legible through practical detail, candid interviews, and close attention to the business behind personal taste.
Fat Mascara treats beauty as an everyday practice shaped by commerce, taste, and social pressure. Jessica Matlin moves between conversational interviews and topical discussion, asking how products work while keeping an eye on the industries and identities built around them.
A hairbrush full of dead skin; a face wash worn across a chest. Curious yet?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Molly Stern makes pre-makeup skin prep feel tactile, practical, and alive.
Molly Stern's skin-prep method gives this Fat Mascara conversation its cleanest shape: a finished face starts with circulation, slip, and patience.
Beauty branding lands clearly here as Camille Moore argues for world building and real-world proof.
Fat Mascara positions Camille Moore as Jessica's much-buzzed-about branding guest, and the episode settles on a clean idea: in beauty, branding is world building.
Editor banter, Greenwich Mom thinking, and one sharp lip-color pick.
Fat Mascara turns its first-ever newsroom episode into an easy, lived-in conversation with Andrea Laventhal, known to friends and family as Andy Lavs and now People’s executive director of Special Integrated Projects, after a previous run as style and beauty director.
Caroline Hirons' Fat Mascara interview returns with a farewell tint as the show approaches its ending.
Fat Mascara uses a replayed Caroline Hirons interview as a wistful marker for the show's final stretch. Jen Sullivan begins by explaining that she has accepted a full-time job and will not be able to keep the show going after next week, giving the episode a clear farewell frame.
A beauty-culture chat becomes a candid turning point, with dupe-culture skepticism and a thoughtful detour into Ulla Henriksen's legacy.
Fat Mascara folds a beauty-culture roundup into a candid turning point for the show, as one host shares that she is taking a full-time job and that Fat Mascara as listeners know it will be no more.
A practical hairbrush-cleaning episode that makes beauty upkeep feel like everyday household care.
Fat Mascara turns hairbrush cleaning into a tidy little case study in beauty upkeep, starting with what collects there: dead skin cells, dandruff, dry shampoo, hairspray, and skin oils.
A sharp beauty branding episode about how products become worlds people want to join in public.
Fat Mascara's conversation with Camille Moore frames beauty branding as something broader than a product, a feed, or a polished campaign. Jessica introduces Moore as the Internet's favorite branding expert, and Moore separates marketing from branding in plain terms: marketing…





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Jessica Matlin interviews Camille Moore, a branding expert known as 'the internet's favorite branding expert.' Camille recounts her childhood in Canada, where she developed a fascination with brands by shopping at secondhand stores like Value Village.
Host Jen interviews TikTok housekeeping expert Vanessa Amaro, who started cleaning houses with her husband after he lost his job and later gained fame on social media.
This episode features an interview with Cristina Nuñez, co-founder of True Beauty Ventures, discussing what venture capital investors look for in beauty brands and the emotional journey of working with founders.
This episode features an interview with the hosts of the Polyester Podcast, discussing the intersection of beauty, pop culture, feminism, and identity through their independent arts publication.
On Fat Mascara, makeup artist and KJH Brand founder Katie Jane Hughes explains why she built products around practical innovation and beauty education.
Fat Mascara host Jessica interviews celebrity makeup artist Molly Stern, whose clients include Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, and Greta Gerwig, about her creative journey, her red-carpet prep routine, and the tenacity she admires in her clients.
Fat Mascara opens with a Milani Cosmetics sponsorship and Jessica introducing Camille Moore, whom she calls the internet's favorite branding expert.
Fat Mascara opens its first newsroom episode with Andrea Lavinthal, known as Andy Lavs, and begins with the relaunch before easing into a warm, beauty-community reminiscence.
The host announces the revival of the Fat Mascara podcast after a hiatus, expressing excitement about returning with familiar elements and new content like the Artist Salon franchise featuring Bobbi Brown and Daniel Martin.
The hosts reflect on their podcast's journey from a 12-episode agreement to over 700 episodes, expressing gratitude and nostalgia while teasing a look back at their team and experiences.
Caroline Hirons tells Fat Mascara that "clean beauty" has no definition and that fear about ingredients is driven by brands, retailers, and groups like the EWG.
The show opens with big news.
This episode of Fat Mascara discusses beauty trends in South Korea with guest Jenny Jin, exploring beauty culture and products.
This episode features cosmetic chemist Victoria Fu sharing expert advice on how to shop for skincare products effectively.
This episode revisits a popular interview with makeup artist Jamie Greenberg, focusing on how to talk to kids about beauty, as it was the top episode of the year for the podcast.