I’ve been having bad thoughts. They’re Pete Evans-related.
I know, I’m not alone. But actually, they’re about Pete’s wife, Nicola Robinson Evans.
Before you throw your phone out of the window, curse me and Mamamia and all of the online universe for not letting women just lead their own goddam lives, for judging, for ‘tearing women down’, please let me throw some disclaimers your way.
I have never met Nicola Robinson Evans, but I know people who have.
They say she’s lovely. She’s certainly been making Evans very happy for years now, and looks to be a wonderful, caring step-mum to his two girls. I know she does a lot of kind things for animals, and you go girl, and live your best life and all of those things.
But on Sunday Night when I was watching the interview with her and Pete from their beautiful farm in Byron Bay I was entirely distracted from what they were saying.
Distracted by the fact that someone who tells me bread is un-natural, processed and unhealthy appears to have an entrenched enthusiasm for chemically-assisted fillers and implants.
Woah. I know. Harsh. I’m talking about another woman’s face. It’s not nice.
But think about it. Pete Evans and Nicola – who is on Instagram as Nutrition Mermaid and is deserving of your follow IMMEDIATELY – think that adding flouride to water is dangerously un-natural.
They tell people that dairy is a giant conspiracy to sap calcium from your bones. They say that sunscreen is toxic. The diet that they promote tirelessly on TV, in books, online and coming soon to a cinema near you preaches that lentils are bad for you. Fricking quinoa is bad for you.
They wouldn’t dream of using chemicals to clean their house.
But apparently, silicon implants, lip and cheek fillers and Botox are fine.
How can that be? Seriously. How can that be?
I think I know. The power of online lifestyle gurus – or ‘influencers’ as they’re now known – is that they look better than you do.
Can you live a clean life while still injecting Botox into your face? Listen to Holly Wainwright, Monique Bowley and Mia Freedman talk about it on Mamamia Out Loud.
Every yoga-loving vegan on Instagram is a size-nothing stunner who’s never met a pair of yoga pants that didn’t make their bum look gravity-defying incredible. And that’s the important part. The optics, as they call it in politics. No-one is listening to what you’re saying if you don’t look good saying it.
Even when you are a warrior in the ‘food is medicine’ movement. Even when you are encouraging people to turn their backs on pasta en-masse, even when you genuinely believe that cutting out legumes could save a life, you can’t look average. And Nicola looks nothing like average.
The fact that Pete Evans himself has a stunning ‘before and after’ transformation helps enormously in his peddling of The Paleo Way. He used to be a slightly pudgy pizza chef with a touch of the boozy bloat. Thanks to paleo, his eyes are sparkletastic, his skin is a delicious shade of sun-kissed terracotta and his teeth are so bright they could help you find your keys on a dark night. Paleo’s great like that.
So of course, the Nutrition Mermaid needs to look the part. In her flower crowns and her floaty cheesecloth and her bare-tattooed toes, she needs to look every inch the glowing hippy goddess to play the role, and she does. You don’t get 35k followers by looking boring, however pure your message.
Robinson Evans is not alone. Freelee the vegan “banana girl” blogger had to defend her use of Botox last year. Fitness guru Ashy Bines admits she alters her photographs, which, surely, is the most “natural” way to erase wrinkles.
Nicola herself has spoken about her three breast augmentations. About how dabbling in Botox and fillers was driven by fear that she wasn’t good enough. Evans told the Good Weekend last year that his wife ‘deeply regrets’ her breast implants, and is ‘looking forward to having them removed in the near future.’ On Sunday Night, Nicola herself motioned to her still-there breasts and called them “toxic”.
No woman deserves to have her face analysed by strangers, so I’m not going to speculate specifically on what Nicola may or may not have done to hers.
But Botox and fillers generally last three to six months. After that, all the goodness inside them – the ‘synthetic hydrocloric acid’ in fillers, the ‘botulnim toxin’ in Botox – gets absorbed into the body. It sinks back into you.
Now I am not paleo, or vegan. My body is flooded with toxins, I'm certain of it. A little bit of Botox wouldn't touch the sides in the soupy mess of my insides, I'm sure.
But I am not making hundreds of thousands of dollars telling the world that I hold the secret to solving their niggling health problems. The Byron Bay farmhouse of my dreams wasn't built on encouraging people to turn away from healthcare professionals and towards bone broth. I don't make a living convincing people they are in the grip of a vast conspiracy that keeps them in the thrall of pill-pushing big pharma.
That would be Pete Evans, and his gorgeous wife, the Nutrition Mermaid.
Who, obviously, are sometimes happy to choose aesthetics over doctrine, as long as it helps them keep selling the dream.
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