Jennie Sacks: [00:03:48] I’m turning thirty-six next week, and I feel pretty good and pretty wonderful, but I feel I should feel I’m getting old like other people think. Once you turn thirty-six, that’s like, now you’re almost 40. But it’s not true.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:04:18] It’s interesting because I have two different feelings about this. On one hand, I don’t want to age, I’m thirty four. I just turned thirty four in March. But on the other hand I look very young. So when people see me they think I’m in my twenties and you know the nature of my work. I’m a journalist, I travel the world, I cover very serious issues. And sometimes I have found that, you know, people don’t take me seriously because I look so young. And I remember so many times I was at CNN and Al-Jazeera and, you know, I go to a meeting or something and they think I’m an intern. I’m like, no I’m the producer on this. And so I don’t know how I feel from that aspect. Right. But I mean, of course, I also don’t like to feel old or get old or show that I’m getting old.

Jennie Sacks: [00:05:35] So I have a lot to say about gray hair, Maria and Tara. So I started going gray when I was fifteen, both my sister and I. My sister’s four years older. But I started going gray when I was 15 when I went to college, your experience of your hairs. So every Sunday night, my roomy and I would sit and she would pluck my gray hairs out. Starting at nineteen, I started dying, my hair brown, dark. My hair is light brown, but darker brown so much that I didn’t know what my hair was until I’d say, let’s see, five years ago. So when I was thirty, maybe thirty-one, my hair is seventy percent gray. So I decided to start dying it blonde because it would blend better.

Jennie Sacks: [00:06:22] And I fantasized about just going gray. This is something I fantasized about for years and aging and this topic are so intertwined. My sister, who I love dearly and is wonderful, also completely gray now said to me, as did my father over and over, do not let your hair go gray until you get a man. You’re thirty-two, you’re thirty-three, you’re thirty-four and single. You cannot let your hair go gray. People are going to think you’re older, you won’t be attractive. And it was so offensive but also so deeply ingrained and deeply ingrained in our society that it was this fantasy. But I never thought I would actually do it.

Jennie Sacks: [00:07:12] And then I have to say, I think covid has been a blessing for women. I don’t know if you guys follow, but there’s the whole community on Instagram of Silver Sisters. And I think the first lockdown was three months of… I just let my roots grow. And then I was like, I’m just going to let it go. I don’t have to go back to work. Just let it go. Let it go. And now it’s been sixteen months and I’m just going gray and I love it. And I have to say I think it looks awesome. I think people still think I’m blonde, but still my sister, the second she was able to go back to get her hair dyed, she went back and every time she sees me, she’s like, are you going to make an appointment to get your hair dyed? And it’s silly, being fully gray at thirty-six seems scary, but I kind of am loving it. And I’m grateful that the pandemic gave me and other women I think the opportunity to finally allow that. And I feel like myself. I cannot tell you the amount of anxiety and pressure that there was, which seems ridiculous.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:10:32] Ok, a few thoughts on that. I think I just want to comment on that. The grey hair quickly and then I want to come back to Botox and all. You know, my mom, she is sixty nine years old and she looks so beautiful. She was never heavy on makeup. So her skin is perfect. But, you know, she she hates dying her hair because it’s just time-consuming. And she thinks that it’s, you know, thinning her hair and so on. But I just think that she’s so beautiful and so young, still youthful that why does she want to go gray? And as you ladies know, I’m having my wedding this year. And I said, mummy, just wait until the wedding. And if you want to go all gray, fine, but just don’t do it for the wedding.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:11:18] But fundamentally, I thought about this a lot. Fundamentally, what that gray hair stands for, I don’t think it has anything to do with aesthetics for me. It has to do with time. And I think with aging, that’s the issue for me. I suppose I don’t want to see the passing of time or I don’t want to feel that my mom is getting older or I’m getting older because that means I’m having less time on this planet, if that makes sense, right. I’m having less time with my mom. I’m having less time with my dad. My dad passed a few years ago. But I think for me, it’s that sense of time that has passed rather than aesthetics. But also as someone coming back to the cosmetic surgeries and Botox or fillers and all that.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:12:06] You know, again, I work in the media industry. And, you know, I think obviously there’s a lot of pressure to look a certain way when you’re working in Hollywood or the news or any sort of public entertainment. Right. But at the same time, fundamentally, I think people need to do whatever the hell they want to do. OK, if I like getting Botox or fillers or whatever, I do it because I want to, not because someone has told me or I want to look a certain way. So that’s why I don’t like when people in the society want to put things in a box. You, oh, you should look this way or you should do it that way. Or you have to have this or that. No, if you don’t like your nose, go get a nose job. You know, if I don’t like this wrinkle, I am going to go get Botox. Right, because I want to. Yeah, it’s because it’s my choice, not because it’s influenced.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:14:42] Because that makes so much money. I’m sorry, but that makes so much money and it’s not hard to do.

Jennie Sacks: [00:14:48] You’re right. So I was talking to Maria about this. So I live in New York City and I have very fair skin and I’ve had basal cells before that have to be removed. So I go get skin checks every six months and my dermatologist is fabulous. But the experience that this woman had who wrote to you, I one hundred percent had the same experience. But thankfully I didn’t let it upset me. I was just really… because I went to get my normal full body checkup, the starting of probably a couple of years ago. And at the end she was like, oh, and while you’re here if you want, I can do this line.

Jennie Sacks: [00:15:27] And then she asked if I wanted laser for the like spots on my, like, sunspots. That’s what I didn’t realize. And I was like, do I have sunspots? Do I look like I have damaged skin and was like slightly offended. But you’re right, this is somebody who is supposed to just be doing skin checks for skin cancer, which is what I’m there for, and just casually like, oh, do you need this? And so, I mean, she’s but one of the top dermatologists in the city and I love her, but you cannot…She only does full-body skin checks one morning a week and she does the procedures for basal cells one morning every other week, because, as I mean, Tara just said, yeah, that’s like, that’s how you make money.

Jennie Sacks: [00:16:16] She also has her whole, skincare line now. And I kind of think that in dermatology, at least in Manhattan, you have to go that route. You can’t just be a medical, medical straight-up doctor.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:16:30] For sure. Everyone now, I mean, I live in London. Everyone has a skin care line and everyone’s is so groundbreaking and so special. But but again, this is a this is a very lucrative industry. It makes a lot of money. And it’s not an expensive thing to put a filler or Botox. I mean, you can do one in five minutes, but I think it gets to a very sort of fundamental societal issue. And I don’t want to get philosophical here, but I do think that, you know, in the last maybe decade or so with social media and Instagram and, you know, Keeping Up with the Kardashians and all these people in mainstream media that young girls look at in ways perhaps aspire to or if they are not aspiring to be like them, still encounter on a daily basis the standards of how to look has perhaps shifted.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:17:31] And I think… Again, I really don’t want to get philosophical here, but I genuinely think that, you know, parents or I just think that we need to re-evaluate and kind of rethink these conversations and narratives and standards, because I don’t want to have a daughter who grows up looking at these people thinking that that’s how it is. And I think in the US, you know, again, I compare the US to the UK right now. I can because I live there now. But it’s just it’s so much in your face here compared to the rest of the world, at least from my experience, I don’t know. So I just think this whole issue comes to so many root causes.

Jennie Sacks: [00:18:12] What’s it like in Dubai? Isn’t that big make-up…

Tara Kangarlou: [00:18:19] So much of this is to do with social media as well.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:18:52] Very sophisticated.

Jennie Sacks: [00:19:03] Now it’s silver sister.

Jennie Sacks: [00:19:05] At least on Instagram.

Jennie Sacks: [00:19:10] I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I will say as I am going gray, I have thought, thank God my grays are coming in pretty because if they were mousey and not so nice, I probably would just keep dying it.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:19:54] That makes it worse, because when you pluck it, then it grows straight out.

Jennie Sacks: [00:20:59] A hundred percent.

Jennie Sacks: [00:21:32] You’re my role model or the most influential person in my life.

Jennie Sacks: [00:22:07] Oh, my mom, it was going to be her present when I graduated from college was a facelift. She talked about it all the time for years. Her and her best friend. It was their joke but not a joke. She didn’t get it. Her friend did.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:22:23] Yeah, I just…My mom was never like that.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:22:29] That’s the thing and that’s what I want to talk about as well. It’s so interesting. Again, I’m Iranian American. I lived half of my life in Iran and half in the US. And, you know, my parents were here in late sixties, seventies. So to an extent she was Americanized. Right. But in Iran, again, I don’t go off tangent, but it is quite fascinating because, you know, since the revolution, women have to wear scarves. So you can’t be all dressed up, you know, hair done and so on and go on the street. This hijab was very strict in the early years of the revolution. OK, so seventy nine to mid nineties was quite strict, but then slowly, slowly, slowly it loosened up. Right. So if you go to Iran right now, I mean you’d see girls with super, super tight, you know, outer coats and super colorful scarves and you know, half of the hair is out from the front. Half of their hair is out in the back.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:23:26] And mind you, that cosmetic surgery is so big in Iran. OK, huge. Actually a lot of people just go to Iran from the region to get their nose jobs. And one of the reasons, guys, is because that generation was so stifled and constrained that the only thing that they could show was their face. Right, right. So the more makeup they put on, the prettier they felt and the more they felt they are being seen because otherwise they were restricted, if that makes sense. Right. And I found again in my travels and my work is that, you know, the more you restrict a society, the more that ambition and desire to set free would come out. And that’s why in the Middle East, these women cover their hairs. Right. But then again, the amount of makeup on their faces is crazy. And if it’s about being modest and, you know, like a modest woman, that certainly does not look modest to me.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:24:36] Of course, exactly. 100 percent. If that’s your prerogative. You want to do that. Yes. But coming back to the whole philosophical thing, again, based on my experience, so many of these issues come down to how the society has made you feel right. That a woman is only beautiful. You know, to this extent. This is what we’re seeing. So that needs to be pretty

Tara Kangarlou: [00:25:03] Exactly.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:25:16] I remember there was a friend of mine. She was having a birthday maybe a couple of weeks ago. And I kid you not. There was no one picture that she liked taking. I mean, she kept doing filters and she kept doing these poses. And I’m like, I’m so sick and tired of this. Can you just take a frickin’ picture?

Tara Kangarlou: [00:25:41] But this was so obsessive that I didn’t even… You know we all do it. Of course I do it, too. I mean, I take a ton of pictures.

Jennie Sacks: [00:27:26] This is something you teach in the class.

Tara Kangarlou [00:28:52] We’re doing it now.

Jennie Sacks: [00:28:58] I’ve always had had freckles and I love them.

Jennie Sacks: [00:29:39] Yeah. We talked about that. I started somebody else’s program, not your friends, which I never finished. And I really would like to restart it. But yeah, it wasn’t until I guess sometime this winter where all of a sudden, one day I realized, oh my God, I have really bad, there were 11 lines. Like do I frown all of the time? I must. I don’t know. And the three pretty deep lines in my forehead that I never noticed before and I wanted to do something. So I need to get into it and actually commit to it. But it was fun and also something that I do just more of soothing, self-soothing than anything is the Gua sha stones, however, you say it. Yeah, I find, it’s a very nice ritual. And actually when I’m anxious, it kind of just soothes my whole body. And that does help smooth out things as well.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:30:38] And I think… We’re talking about face yoga. But fundamentally what I’m hearing, because I’ve never tried it, I’ve seen it done. It’s about values. You know, you are valuing a sort of internalized way of dealing with whatever it is that you want to deal with right. Esthetically on your face or if it makes you feel good. And I think going back to the earlier point about the society, I think we should start changing or shifting our values to what matters or what is really meaningful. And Jennie, you said it. Why is it that aesthetics have to define who we are or the way we look? And I think we are all individually responsible to living by these more positive values that don’t just reduce us to, oh, how tiny her nose is or how big her lips.

Jennie Sacks: [00:31:39] When you were teaching us about saying nice things to yourself that was so foreign to me. I remember passing in front of the window once and, and forcing myself and I couldn’t think of a nice thing to say. And it actually was I guess now to maybe two and a half years ago. But what I did and it was so uncomfortable, but I started, I would every morning and this is not about aging, but every morning I had gotten out of the shower. I looked at myself in the mirror and I would just without even realizing, say everything that was not nice and ugly and that I didn’t like.

Jennie Sacks: [00:32:19] And I forced myself to hold a rose quartz on my heart and look at myself nude in the mirror and say, Jennie Sacks, I love you. You are beautiful. And I couldn’t get the words out when I first started. And I and then I put the rose quartz in my bra and wear it around all day. And I think after three months, I one day realized, wow, you love yourself, you don’t even need to say it anymore. And now I really don’t say nasty things to myself anymore, which is amazing because it’s not nice to not be nice to yourself. But yeah, once you really love your body, then you can, I guess, start, do anything.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:33:01] These values change. I mean. Exactly.

Jennie Sacks: [00:33:23] They would run away from you. They wouldn’t want to be around you.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:34:08] So, you know, when we lost dad, ten years ago, my mom and I started doing this yoga, which is a Korean discipline, and my mom kept on doing it. And she’s been doing it now for ten years. And actually, she teaches. But I remember one of the first things that we were told and taught is self-love and self-acceptance. And as simple as that sounds, it’s something that we didn’t do. And to Jennie’s point, it’s something that truly, truly changed my mom’s life. And from that day on, from that second or third class, whatever that was, the training was every morning you wake up and you have to say, Tara, I love you. You are beautiful. I love you. And I was like, Oh, God. Okay.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:34:51] But my mom has been doing that every single day. And quite frankly, I see the change in her face, in her mood, in her, in everything. And for the listeners who may never have done this, I truly have seen the life-changing impact. And quite frankly, I wish I would do it every day because I’m very hard on myself. And Maria knows this. I’m super, super hard on myself. And, you know, again, aesthetically, whatever change I bring to my hair, face, body, whatever, it genuinely is because I want it, I want it. Not because of anything else. And again, I think fundamentally, the reasons behind the why we want to look a certain way is so important.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:35:58] And you pick on yourself. I mean, you’re stressed, you pick on yourself. Oh, my God. Like, this is this. This is that. But if you’re genuinely, psychologically, internally happy. Yeah. You would not want to have a bigger nose or a thinner nose. I don’t know, a smaller nose. Yeah.

Jennie Sacks: [00:36:13] But it also physically has consequences. Stress. More Jennie stories – I’m working you know now with the doctor, a naturopathic doctor because I have histamine intolerance and one of her biggest things is to stay away from stress. Because when I get really stressed, I mean I’ve had my first flight since covid a month ago and just leading up to flying, my eczema on my hand, flared up and was out of control. When I’m stressed, my face is puffy. I wake up and I look like I was drinking tequila all night. You actually get inflamed. Stress is huge and it causes inflammation in your body.

Jennie Sacks: [00:38:09] Resilience.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:38:46] Mental health. I mean, I think during covid, I realized and I was always a big mental health advocate. My charity focuses on mental health for four children in vulnerable communities and for refugees. But mental health is perhaps the root cause of so many of the issues that we deal with or what happened to us. I mean, if mentally we’re healthy, emotionally, we’re vibrant. That shows and that reflects because, you know, the same way that your feet hurt when you’re walking. Have you ever thought about your brain hurting? I mean, you may physically not feel it. It maybe not it may not be pinching, but it’s hurting. And we need to care about our brain the same that we do about our body or skin. And again, fundamentally, for me, it comes to mental health.

Jennie Sacks: [00:39:41] I think another maybe a blessing in disguise from covid is I do think that mental health is now more talked about and center of the conversation. Yeah, it’s something that I’ve always talked about and been very vocal personally, but almost nobody else is kind of like previous to Covid. I’m always shocked when I hear people say therapy is looked back upon by their family or anything like that. And I’m so glad that now it’s much more accepted.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:40:17] And I want to share this. Maria, you know, this. But Jennie, when I’m going through stress and when I’m emotionally in a volatile state, I may not pick on myself aesthetically. Oh, my skin is this or I’m too fat or I’m too thin or I’m too whatever. I become a hypochondriac. I’m like, oh my God, I’ve breast cancer now. Oh, my God, I have a tumor in my head. Oh, my God.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:40:46] Exactly, you know what I mean? That’s how my mental health manifests. And for some people they’re like, oh, you know, maybe I need to do this to my face or that or I look too old. I look too this or you see what I mean. And I have I’ve learned this. I mean, I know that when I’m going through some emotional phase or I’m stressed, I mean, this last year with the book, I was just losing it. Right. You know, I was constantly thinking that I’m dying or even with covid I was, and still.

Jennie Sacks: [00:41:12] You did get it and you were very sick. Right?

Tara Kangarlou: [00:41:15] Right. But, you know, we were in Stockholm with my fiancee. And I mean, it’s a beautiful town, but I didn’t know anyone. You know, I had this very mundane routine. And again, you both know I’m someone that needs to be super social. I’m out and about. I need to be plugged in. But I wasn’t right. And I got very depressed. June, July. And I really thought that I’m developing an eye disease or, you know, I kept calling my doctor friends and like, you know, my boob, one of them is bigger than the other. Am I having breast cancer?

Jennie Sacks: [00:41:48] We shouldn’t be laughing.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:41:50] No, but here’s the thing. I am aware of that. Right?

Jennie Sacks: [00:41:54] Self-awareness is the most important thing.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:41:56] And my point is that mental health instability or emotional instability led me to be physically vulnerable in this way. But others may pick on their aesthetics. And that’s again, it goes back to my initial point. I was saying, you know, values, emotional state and really how you feel internally, really reflects what you want externally.

Jennie Sacks: [00:42:21] A hundred percent. And I just wanted to say I’m so glad, you know, I love this podcast, but I’m so glad that you do this podcast. And there are so many people now that are resources for everyone, because honestly, before, either you talked about it on a podcast or we talked about it, I don’t know. But I never, literally it did not process in my mind that Botox is toxic, that that is, that’s part of the name and that there could be anything again. Yeah, everybody do what they want to do. But that it’s not… What I’m trying to say is I just thought it was completely normal. And that’s what you do. And there’s nothing to even think about.

Jennie Sacks: [00:43:07] And I didn’t pick on things at the time, so I didn’t think I needed it. But had I not learned these things from you, maybe when I went to the doctor next week for my six-month checkup and she said that I wouldn’t even think twice, of course, given Botox. That’s what you do. So I’m just really glad that you’re putting this information out there. Yeah.

Jennie Sacks: [00:44:15] That’s what I was going to do when I was younger. Also for excessive sweating.

Jennie Sacks: [00:45:39] Really?

Jennie Sacks: [00:45:47] Still, doing it Tara?

Tara Kangarlou: [00:45:48] Yes!

Jennie Sacks: [00:46:35] I don’t know why I sweat so much when I was younger and in my twenties, but once I switched over to natural deodorant, from your guidance, though, it does take a lot of different tries, let me just say, to find the right one. But I realize that a couple of weeks ago, I don’t sweat at all a lot anymore.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:46:53] I love natural deodorants. I have a good one. I can’t think of a name.

Jennie Sacks: [00:46:56] Primally Pure is great.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:47:07] I have to say, speaking of Botox, I’ve gotten it. I will probably get it. I don’t even think you can tell. Can you tell?

Jennie Sacks: [00:47:14] No. I mean why would you be able to?

Tara Kangarlou: [00:47:15] That’s the thing. Again, you do it because you want you..

Tara Kangarlou: [00:47:20] And again, people need to do what makes them feel good. I didn’t do it because I had wrinkles. I just wanted to because I do the salon. And I know if I don’t get it done, this will continue happening and I would do this and you know, I’m happy bunny. But the point is right now, again, because of the societal pressure, I feel every Tom, Dick and Harry is injecting Botox. I mean, it’s so easy to get licensed or trained to do, you know, injectables right now that any nurse practitioner, anyone can do it.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:47:56] And I think people who are interested in doing this need to go to someone, number one, obviously legit, but also, you know, understand a product that they’re using or understand, you know, the clientele that they’ve had the reviews. Do your research. Don’t just go to someone, you know, inexpensive because you’re saving a couple of hundred dollars. You’re putting something in your body, you’re injecting something into your face. So you definitely don’t want to be frugal or cheap on this, because right now there are so many nasty products and incapable people out there. And who are taking advantage of this demand and people, especially young people’s naiveness. See what I mean? And I think, you know, your doctor, you were sixteen, seventeen. He or she should have explained to you about this.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:50:01] Yea, you sign a consent.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:50:06] Ok, I never read the whole thing.

Jennie Sacks: [00:50:11] It’s so common in the mainstream that as I said, I wouldn’t even think twice about doing it.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:50:16] But I have to say something here. Exactly. So taking you back to Iran, a very dear family friend of ours, their son. He, you know, he’s in his late twenties. He does sports. I mean, he’s very handsome and fit and whatnot. And he had excessive sweating. Right. So he apparently had gone in to this whatever doctor to Botox under his arm. So he does that. And then a month later, this is maybe three or four years ago, he started getting very sick. And I’m not quite sure exactly what the issue was, but it got to a point where he was almost in a coma and was in the hospital for two weeks. No one knew what’s wrong with him. He was so ill that he almost lost his life. You know, I mean, this is a couple of years ago. And it got to a point where, I don’t know, their aunt from Germany consulted with the doctor. And then something happened. Something happened.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:51:18] So finally they figured out that he had gotten Botox under the arm. And that product was something they got on the black market because of all the sections and all the black market related issues in Iran, whatever. So that was just some nasty product and it didn’t work. And it was just, you know, it caused this, but it took them two weeks to figure this out. This kid almost died. I mean, it was just a disaster. So my point is, is so important to know what you’re doing. It’s so important to know who you’re doing it with. It is so important, you know, to what the product is, and yeah.

Jennie Sacks: [00:51:59] Or your hair.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:52:02] You don’t need to impress anyone except love yourself.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:52:22] I mean, I always think about my grandmother and mother, who always told me beauty comes from within, beauty comes from the heart. And I think we should practice a little bit more, especially in this day and age.

Jennie Sacks: [00:52:34] You’re lucky that you have a wonderful mother and grandmother. I mean, I did as well, but they didn’t give me those words of wisdom. I think it’s just, do what you want to do. Don’t listen to other people and live your life for other people, and it will bring you so much more peace and happiness.

Tara Kangarlou: [00:53:16] Love yourself. Wake up every day loving yourself and be grateful for the fact that you woke up.

Jennie Sacks: [00:53:24] I don’t want to just repeat what Tara said. And I listen to all of your podcasts and I forgot that you asked this question. I should have had something prepared. Just, we only have one life and you only have one body and just be so grateful and thankful and treat your body with love and kindness.