TRey Parker and Matt Stone have always been very outspoken about how South Park, like every animated sitcom of the last 35 years, lives in the shadow of The Simpsons. The Simpsons, even in its later, more uneven seasons, surpasses South Park in many ways: greater overall depth, stronger emotional moments, even in the sheer number of episodes.
However, South Park often does better than react to contemporary social trends. Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and the others are more or less the same age as Bart (and have been for decades); but The Simpsons has never been as adept at tackling trends, technology, and social issues as South Park, which has always been more immediate and responsive. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to see the boys get into, say, lookmaxxing and aura farming, which is exactly what the third episode of South Park’s 29th season is about.
You Like That On Your Face begins with Cartman breathlessly interrupting Kyle and Stan discussing Wendy’s mysterious desire for anti-aging facial cream with the news that Kyle’s little brother Ike is in danger of being “mogged” by another student. But Ike prevails in a live-streamed aura battle because he’s now interested in lookmaxxing, the absurd practice carried out by influencers of using any means necessary to achieve greater facial symmetry.
As Stan later explains to his father, Randy, there are apps that will analyze and rate your appearance using AI and suggest products to improve your inevitably terrible score. Although Randy advises closing the app and simply eating well and exercising to take care of your body, he too is led to rate his face on the app. Meanwhile, Ike faces a challenge from Chase Chadwick – the only person to ever get a perfect score through the Chadmaxx app.
So where do all the tweens end up at different points in the episode, in order to be at their best? Sephora, of course, Parker and Stone talk about the very real popularity of skin creams and beauty products with troubling young children. Stan takes Wendy there for her birthday and meets an old man who warns him that his granddaughter went there six years ago and will never return. As Stan loses track of Wendy and wanders around the store, the familiar shelves and excited crowds disappear, the walls turn yellower and yellower, the views stranger and stranger… and, oops, Stan has entered the Backrooms.
It’s an inspired juxtaposition—the capitalist graveyard depicted by Backrooms with the hip hustle and bustle of Sephora’s decidedly nonliminal space—suggesting (without anyone on the show ever saying it) that perhaps there’s less distance between the two than we think and that trend-chasing is a dead end.
Stan is able to escape the Sephora-Backrooms, panicked but unharmed. Randy, however, shrinks back to preteen size, suddenly scaled to his son and the rest of the kids—the product of anti-aging procedures that worked too well, apparently. He’s not the last character to visit Sephora; Kyle has given up trying to intervene with Ike, so Cartman, never one to ignore an insignificant popularity totem, agrees to take the toddler there.
When Stan and Kyle discover that Cartman and Ike are in the Sephora-Backrooms (from Randy, who is now enrolled as a student at South America’s elementary school), they rush to the rescue. Various Sephora employees offer various creams with the pornographic and suggestive phrase that gives the episode its title: “Do you like this on your face?” they ask insistently. The monstrous Sephora manager in Backrooms goes further, squirting lotion from a crotch bottle while shouting the crude slogan.
This is part and parcel of South Park wanting to go too far, and it’s also a bit of a shame; the blatant insinuation makes this episode rather perfect for actual tweens amid the skincare routine trend in, well, TV-MA territory the series is known for — although younger audiences are perhaps most likely to laugh recognizing the episode’s absurdity. Then again, what are tweens more likely to watch than something they’re not really supposed to watch? This might be the best way to make fun of app-altered self-care without sounding like squeaky adults who don’t know what they’re talking about.
The symbolism of a clueless adult barging into the weird realm of youthful tendencies fully emerges at the end of the episode, when a half-drunk and still childish Randy enters the aura battle between Ike and the supposedly “hot” Chase Chadwick (hilariously grotesque) and ends up “mlogging” Chase by beating him to the ever-loving hell. Problem… solved? The adults may not have the answers, but at least they can ruin everyone’s fun with a damn mess.
Gn entert
