They Cure Bacon-Don't They?

I broke a nail on the way to work and called in sick. Not because I’m lazy. Because I know it would be noticed. Because somehow, a chipped nail meant I had failed the Orange County aesthetic.

Short, clean, neutral nails? That’s upper class. Anything else is cheap, lower class. Dare I say it? Admin-level.

Once, when I was younger, I used a black Sharpie to cover a hole in my black tights. It wasn’t creative. It was survival. And I never told anyone.

I worried someone could tell I was wearing a discount Target suit. These are people that never shopped the dollar aisle and wouldn’t dare enter a thrift store — they say it smells funny.

That’s what aesthetic class looks like: A silent scoreboard of grooming, polish, and restraint. Even your cuticles are under review.

This is what no one tells you about class. It’s not just about money. It’s about passing.

I used to work in a world where your car, your hands, your tone of voice— all had to match the decor.

A Civic? Working class. A Jaguar? Trying too hard. A Tesla truck? A tech bro in cosplay. The classic car? That’s for the old rich who don’t have to prove anything.

The poor pretend up. The rich pretend down. And everyone else just hopes not to get called out.

I knew what it meant to blend in. And I knew what it meant to not.

We sculpt our faces into cartoons and call it confidence. We inflate our lips until they could swallow a watermelon. We suck the fat out of our cheeks, and call the shadows left behind empowerment.

Jessica Rabbit was a parody. Now she's a blueprint.

We say it's self-love. But it smells like fear.

And when it’s not beauty, it’s pain. We don’t process trauma. We perform it. We don’t feel grief. We brand it.

Even vulnerability has a price point. Even mental health is a marketing plan.

I was a certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor. Until I couldn’t stomach the way the real thing got rewritten for LinkedIn.

People started calling out "sick" because they got a new boss. (And by the way: it's not illegal to be an asshole boss.)

And then came the CEO: The one who went on "medical leave" right after cashing a $500K bonus. Not because he was in crisis. But because he got caught.

He claimed mental illness. While partying with his mistress. Charging Rolexes to the company. Snorting coke off her stomach in a private club their wellness committee paid for.

That’s not a breakdown. That’s a strategy.

That’s weaponized empathy. And it works.

Because he looked the part. Because he had the right watch. Because he never missed a manicure.

Meanwhile, the real ones stay quiet. The ones with stress rashes. With broken nails. With resumes that don’t quite cover the holes in their tights.

We don’t know what human looks like anymore. So we keep building versions that don’t age, don’t crack, and don’t speak back.

We’ve normalized artificial beauty. We’ve taught our faces to behave. We’ve softened the soul out of our skin.

And we worry about AI?

Please.

We can cure bacon. We can pasteurize milk. We can filter our faces, charge trauma to the wellness budget, and still have time to offer lunch to the protestors outside our own buildings.

But we still don’t know how to let people just... be.

We cure bacon. But God forbid we raise our hands.