In August, to-the-point billboards began popping up around Los Angeles and New York City: “BEEF FAT ON YOUR FACE MAKES YOU HOTTER,” one read. Another, emblazoned with a photo of a highland cow, encouraged onlookers: “RUB THIS ON YOUR SKIN.” The party responsible for the mysterious advertisements? Primally Pure, a skincare brand that features beef tallow and emu oil in its products.
Primally Pure is one of several beauty brands and trends to recently generate buzz for using animal-derived ingredients. Earlier this year, TikTokers began singing the praises of Bag Balm, a salve originally made to soothe cow’s udders, formulated with lanolin derived from sheep’s wool. Marin Skincare uses lobster proteins in its popular creams and lip treatments. On a late summer episode of her reality show, Kim Kardashian got a salmon sperm facial.
Simultaneously, wellness is embracing animal-based products. Whole milk is making a comeback. Influencers are swearing off vegetables in favor of “carnivore diets.” Colostrum, sourced from cows, is a featured ingredient in several of Erewhon’s buzzy celebrity smoothies.
After years of opting for oat milk, Impossible burgers, and vegan beauty products, we’re suddenly incorporating cows, sheep, and fish into our beauty and wellness routines. In part, the shift is just the trend cycle rounding the bend: After embracing vegan and “cruelty-free” brands, we’re heading in the opposite direction. But something more insidious may also be behind our taste for animal-based beauty — namely, an increasingly conservative society.
In the American culture wars, veganism has long been associated with liberalism. Take the term “soy boy,” for instance, an epithet used to describe men who don’t adhere to traditional standards of masculinity. Meat consumption, on the other hand, is synonymous with traditional, conservative values. Donald Trump once claimed climate initiatives proposed by Democrats would result in a ban on cows. Far-right figureheads like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson laud the (largely unsubstantiated) cosmetic and mental health benefits of an all-meat diet. The conspiracy theory that the New World Order, run by a cabal of Democratic elites, will force Americans to eat bugs instead of beef is gaining steam in certain circles of right-wing provocateurs.
Incidentally, meat-eating has also become a rallying cry among tradwives. The TikTok sound “Looking For a Tradwife” (a take on the viral “Looking For a Man in Finance”) lists “eats meat” and “tallow” as markers of women who embrace traditional gender roles in marriage.
As Trump and his cabinet prepare to take office in January, these once fringe beliefs are entering the mainstream. In other words, the rise of animal-based beauty is simply a reflection of what’s happening culturally and politically. For steak-eating nationalists, it’s a cause for celebration. But for the average consumer, the trend raises a more practical question: Are animal-derived ingredients actually more effective?
Bethany McDaniel, the founder of Primally Pure, contends that both tallow (beef fat) and emu oil (sourced from emu fat) are superior to plant-based oils and fats because they’re “bioavailable” — their chemical makeup resembles that of human skin. McDaniel also emphasizes that Primally Pure “ethically sources” its tallow and emu oil. According to the brand’s website, it works with “small family farms” and emu farmers certified by the American Emu Association.
Charlotte Palermino, an esthetician and the co-founder of skincare brand Dieux, has a different point of view. “Beef tallow is simply fat. There are a lot of options out there — my mother used Crisco as a kid,” she says. Palermino acknowledges that tallow is similar to the skin’s natural sebum — “but many oils are, like squalane for example.”
“Vegan” became a beauty and wellness buzzword alongside the vegan diet craze of the 2010s. Whether you were slathering botanical oils on your face, taking mushroom supplements, or chowing down on seitan, it was impossible to escape the adage that consuming plants is environmentally friendly. Now, the same argument is being made for the consumption of animal products. Primally Pure’s website points out the pitfalls of monocrop farming, the practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land, leading to soil erosion and decreased biodiversity. Some plant-based beauty brands (and plant-based meat brands) rely on monocropped ingredients.
But the ills of monocropping don’t negate the issues inherent in animal farming. To Palermino, both plant and animal farming are “awful for the environment.” Livestock eat hundreds of pounds of feed (made from plants) a day. And they tend to take up a lot of land, unless they’re being kept in cramped quarters. Palermino adds that many animal-based ingredients, tallow included, go bad easily. “I’m not sure you can say it’s more sustainable than plants when it goes rancid fast.”
At the same time, Palermino acknowledges that “plants don’t get a pass for being a universal good,” listing some of the woes of large-scale crop farming: the nitrogen in fertilizer is sourced from the fossil fuel industry; pesticide run-off harms coral reefs; farming requires huge volumes of water.
Both vegan and animal-based beauty brands that claim to be eco-friendly are greenwashing — in all cases, the most sustainable thing to do is not make products. That said, consumers are more attuned to the buzzwords and marketing catchphrases used by “clean” and vegan beauty brands over the past decade. “People have wised up to the fact that just because something is plant-based doesn’t mean it’s healthy,” McDaniel says. Of course, the opposite is also true: Just because something is animal-derived doesn’t mean it’s healthy, or good for the environment.
Animal-derived products may be resonating with consumers simply because they subvert the dominating wellness narrative of the 2010s: cut the meat, pile on the fruits and veggies. To Tynan Buck, a beauty writer who noticed Primally Pure’s billboards in Brooklyn, this is what makes the brand’s advertising so effective. “They make you take a second look, which, when you’re doing an out-of-home campaign like this, you definitely want,” he says. While he can respect Primally Pure’s marketing mojo, he personally finds the billboards “at best, confronting” and at worst, “gross.”
To both Buck and Palermino, the rise of animal-based beauty is less about efficacy and more about cachet. “Saying something is vegan or animal-based is a marketing category, and doesn’t tell me about the formula,” Palermino says. Buck adds: “Beauty is always a response to what’s happening politically and culturally. It’s not a coincidence that animal-based products are indexing higher at the same time people are drinking raw milk.”