High Touch is a newsletter about aesthetics and longevity, at the place where appearance and health meet.
A lot has happened since I announced High Touch earlier this year. First, a vitriolic cross-platform comment war (I got doxxed! It was crazy) and a drone of essays from self-fashioned cultural commentators. I got to be the internet’s Rorschach test for a fortnight. But then…every major publication got their peptide coverage in. A dozen Substacks centered on new-guard wellness emerged. Celebrities and public figures reclaimed the narratives around their regimens in droves. This isn’t the same landscape it was even a few months ago.
We’re launching High Touch with a week of programming that crosses a variety of themes and formats I created this newsletter to explore. Gird your inboxes. No spoilers, it’s all coming starting tomorrow.
Today, though, a collection of concepts and vantage points that together form a High Touch manifesto:
What I’m calling Selfspan: just as “healthspan” refined our aspirations for our lifespans—not just living longer, but being of sound body and mind for those years—selfspan affirms the desire to identify with the person in the mirror over that time, too. It means whatever it means to you.
This newsletter is here to document the world around us, not shape it. You’ll never see us saying “do this,” ever. This is both practical—physiologies differ wildly, everyone draws their own line in the sand—but also, it’s just of no benefit or detriment to this newsletter whether a reader picks up Botox or not.
Relatedly, no moralizing. Planet Fitness said it best when they proclaimed to be a “judgement-free zone.” (Half joking.) However people want to be healthy or look hot or live to 1,000 years old, honestly, let them. Longevity—selfspan—as a personal goal is not mutually exclusive with other human qualities.
Research is a gradient. Not everything featured here will be based on meta-analyses or RCTs. Not everything will be FDA-approved or on-label. Not everything will be “white market.” Our network of nearly 50 fact checkers will orient the content we publish within the greater scientific literature and link out to further relevant reading. Our ever-expanding professional network is around to lend their insights to the slipperier subjects. And for those conversations along the fringe, the more interest the public shows in a topic, the more research stands to emerge around it.
It’s called High Touch for a reason. A lot of what we cover here is expensive, exclusive, niche. This comes with a perspective that those paying the high cost of emerging tech are bankrolling the road to eventual lower mass pricing. I’m not saying they always will, but life-changing health implications can emerge from blurring the elective-essential divide. Think about botox for migraines, red-light therapy for wound healing…I’d bet we’ll be seeing hyperbaric oxygen therapy prescribed post-surgery en masse within a decade. Still, this trickle down is secondary to the fact that people can spend their money how they wish.
In keeping with High Touch’s central tenet of agency, I’ve made it really easy for those who want to be here to enjoy all of the work we’re publishing, and for those who don’t to opt out without losing access to Magasin’s core content—biweekly fashion and interiors shopping sends (and beyond). You can do that through this button ↓ that lets you toggle on/off your HT and Magasin subscriptions separately.
Also important to state is that High Touch is a paywalled product. Free subs will still get a preview of each feature, plus our industry news cull (for now), but you’ll need to sign up for a paid subscription to read the bulk of our work. $8 a month, $80 a year. Founding plan for $800 just to see what happens (it could only make our content better). That link above leads you to your subscription tier, too.
Until tomorrow x
Currently photoshopping a photo of Laura Reilly in the style of Che Guevara with the beret. Chaura Reilly.
everyone go brush up on choice feminism for the love of god. depoliticizing women’s choices is deeply antifeminist actually. getting your bag by using that depoliticization to market fringe medical services as “wellness” is something even worse. there is maha slop everywhere for those with eyes that wish to see. notable that your examples of trickle down treatments disprove your point: red light therapy and botox were introduced for medical purposes first, rather than into cosmetic contexts with some self indulgent rationale that this would somehow ultimately make services accessible to those who actually need them. blurring the elective-essential divide indeed.