Brittany Luce

Like make no mistake, she was dressing.

But the recent surge of interest in her, a woman who was famously private and never even gave an on-the-record interview in her lifetime, feels a little weird.

Fashion brands are using Bessette's style to promote their products.

New York restaurants frequented by the couple have been packed with customers who want to sit at John and Carolyn's table.

Fans have even been waiting in line at a Manhattan drugstore, hoping to buy a pretty generic-looking plastic headband that Bessette reportedly purchased there decades ago.

Like, maybe we're doing a little too much.

But if I take a step back and I really think about it, is this obsession with Carolyn Bessette all that different from America's obsession with any other beautiful woman who has gone too soon?

Some of our most enduring cultural figures, Marilyn Monroe, Selena, Aaliyah, their images are eternally famous and to a certain degree, eternally profitable.

Something beauty reporter Jessica DeFino has categorized as the morgue gaze.

Beauty inspiration, trends and products that glamorize ageless, poreless beauty.

and lifeless beauty.

To get deeper into this, I'm joined by Jessica DeFino, who writes the Substack newsletter Flesh World and an advice column for The Guardian called Ask Ugly.

She's noticed an intriguing, if not disturbing, death-focused trend across beauty marketing.

Welcome back, Jessica.

Hello, hello.

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

Jessica, let's jump right into it.

It's not unusual for people to find inspiration or even like copy styles from the past, but you sort of made this link between these long gone beauty icons and some of the beauty ideals that we uphold.

What is the morgue gaze?

And so you say you've been seeing this trend for some time now.