I Tried Kourtney Kardashian's Collagen Powder and Now I'm Hot
Thanks, Poosh!
In every working person's life, there is (hopefully) a moment when they feel as though they're doing exactly what they were put on earth to do. For Picasso, that moment might have come in the midst of painting Guernica; for James Joyce, it might have been while writing Ulysses. For me, that moment arrived when a large, bright-pink-capped bottle of Vital Proteins x Poosh "Pink Moon Milk Collagen Latte" powder arrived at the GARAGE office last week.
Known colloquially on Kourtney Kardashian's mysteriously named lifestyle site as "Kourt's Pink Moon Milk Latte," the powder allegedly contains "10G of bone broth collagen per serving" (help), yet somehow manages to smell uncannily like that trusted friend of third-graders everywhere, strawberry milk.
Apprehensively, I scanned the dietary supplement's instructions, learning that I was intended to mix it into hot liquid ("like dairy-free milk", the bottle helpfully suggests) for a "blissful end to a busy day." The supplement contains 1g of melatonin, which is technically a sleep aid, but as The Sopranos' Irina Peltsin once said, "I don't care anymore what happens to me," so I prepared a mugful in the middle of a busy workday. Fuck me up!
As I spooned out a mealy, strawberry-scented portion of collagen powder into a VICE mug (we love a brand), I thought about what I wanted to gain from this endeavor. Summer was coming, and for as long as I can remember, I've dreamed of experiencing the warmer months as a certified Hot™: not a "cute," or a "has a certain look that works for her," but a real, Kardashian-approved smokeshow, the kind who can blithely pose nude for reproductive justice, Ratajkowski-style, and upset absolutely everyone by going on about how she just loves pasta!!!
Make no mistake, this isn't a lament about the current state of my appearance—I'm basically fine with myself—but as I raised my cup to my lips, I couldn't help imagining some strange sort of Kardashian alchemy coursing through my veins as soon as I took my first sip. Would the various and sundry amino acids in the concoction (alanine, arginine, aspartic acid, cystine, glutamic acid, glycine, histidine, hydroxyproline, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine, if you're curious) astrally project me into the rarefied Land of the Hot?
Reader, I stayed earthside. My first thought as I drank the collagen-infused coffee, which I wrote down in my notebook for maximum journalistic precision? "This tastes like a dissolved Trader Joe's PB&J Bar" (a taste I'm intimately familiar with, as I used to keep a box of them in my Subaru glove compartment when I lived in Los Angeles, and would regularly feed them to myself in tiny chunks as rewards for, say, making a green light.)
Gritty and somewhat oily, my coffee had the distinct aftertaste of strawberry lip gloss (oh, what, like you never swallowed some in grade school?), and I only managed about a third of the cup before handing it over to GARAGE's Social Media Editor, Ashley Tyner, who had this to say: "It tastes like...I've never actually used one, but you know those flavored, like, mango douches? This is what I imagine they would taste like as a drink." [Ed.: After some careful research, I believe Ashley was referring to the Summer's Eve 'Island Splash' Douche, which I feel a journalistic obligation to beg you not to use.)
My dreams of drinking the Kardashian Kool-aid and instantly becoming a Hot were, perhaps, unrealistic, but something about the experience of drinking collagen put a slight spring in my step for the rest of the day. "My skin looks good," I thought to myself as I preened for an Instagram selfie—scientists will tell you there's no way eight-odd sips of Pink Moon Milk Collagen Latte affected my skin in any appreciable way, but you know what? Scientists used to think the earth was flat. The Poosh collagen powder made me hot, okay? That's my truth, and I invite you to rejoice in it with me.
