Respect the Balance: Body Horror and the Beauty Industry
By: Mandy Rulez
Shop this article (*affiliate links): https://bookshop.org/lists/fiction-readin-magazineThe Substance made waves through the movie community when it became one of seven horror films in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Picture. The list holds major cult classics - Jaws, The Exorcist, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Get Out - but all feature subgenres that lack in traditional horror tropes: body horror and gore. In a time where women’s bodies are picked apart, dissected and tossed out for the world to judge, The Substance comments on aging in the eye of the entertainment industry and its direct impact on everyday women when unavoidable commentary from all types of media instruct women on how they should look.
Body horror can be used to represent a multitude of things but always holds a severe transformation of the body, either purposefully or not, wanted or not, but usually leading to adverse side effects. While the accolades The Substance received are new in the film world, the literary world has held a close relationship with body horror and the beauty industry for quite some time. Life imitates art, but art so often imitates life. When it’s impossible to scroll without seeing the same lips, the same breasts, the same eyes, and all formulated to mimic Western beauty standards to the extreme, the literary world will inevitably latch on to this distraught feeling of wanting to be an individual while looking exactly like every other influencer out there.
Body Horror and the Beauty Industry in Books
I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea is the perfect place to begin your deep dive. When a ballerina is consistently overlooked for important roles because she is the only Black woman in a prestigious ballet academy, Laure trades her soul to the devil to gain agency back over her life and future in dance. But when she keeps going back for more, her body begins to morph in ways she never expected. Ballerina life is daunting, losing fingernails and being covered in bruises is something Laure has grown accustomed to, but when her body begins to transform in ways that are not humanly possible, she pushes the limits of how much she is willing to sacrifice to feel at home in ballet. Shea dives into the natural horror of being the only Black person in a white-centered room and perfectly illustrates the sense of losing yourself to reach new levels of success.
If you aren’t as keen on the gore aspects that come along with body horror, then Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom is the perfect place to start. Rowbottom delves into life after being a beauty influencer and how our main character feels unrecognizable when she looks in the mirror. She is about to undergo yet another life-threatening surgery, this time to undo the years of work that was done while pressured by her management and other influencers to have bigger breasts, bigger lips, a tighter face, a plumper butt, all while in her early twenties. With harrowing events and a complete lack of self-confidence, our main character feels lost in her own body and struggles to find her way back. She is now 35, working at the “black and white” makeup store, and reflecting on all the things she wished she did differently, the moments she wished she stood up for herself, and the times she wasn’t there for her family that she will never get back.
For the magical realism fans, Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang is the one for you. Our main character’s real name is never revealed, but we are offered her assumed name Anna. A name that was chosen after she began working for Holistik, a one-stop shop for all things wellness (skin care, eyelash extensions, botox, and more). Anna is Chinese-American and, after a terrible accident, had to give up her dream to be a professional pianist in order to care for her parents. Natural Beauty takes a disturbing dive into Western beauty standards (and just how unattainable they really are), skin bleaching and other white-washing products, and a loss of control over the way your body looks and sometimes behaves. Huang isn’t afraid to go places that make you uncomfortable and want to scream at the red flags spotted, but also makes you wonder how you would behave if you were in Anna’s shoes.
Magical realism but also one giant fever dream? Rouge by Mona Awad will check those boxes. Rouge follows Belle after her estranged mother passes away and Belle is left to clean up her home and considerable debts. When a strange woman shows up at her mother’s funeral, Belle learns of a cultish spa her mother religiously attended. After beginning treatments at the same spa, Belle slowly becomes entranced with the person she sees reflected in the mirror: is it even her anymore? Or is it someone completely different? Rouge dives into the rabbit hole of gothic fairy tales, allusions to Eyes Wide Shut (in more ways than you can imagine), and how unattainable beauty standards can be passed down within your own home. The generational trauma of women forced to conform to beauty standards is alive and well in Belle. This book is truly hard to describe, and you may find yourself unable to accurately discuss what happened even after a re-read. But one thing is made clear: the path to eternal youth and beauty is not an easy one.
After diving into literary body horror, it’s hard to turn back. There is no shortage of book recommendations on the topic, but these are a few of our favorites. Who doesn’t love reading about a woman climbing her way out of the beauty industry depths? These books will leave you feeling empowered, in control, and remind you that you are truly one of a kind. You may also need to stare at the wall for a while after finishing these book recommendations, but you’ll want to go back in for more.
