Unquiet
Things

In the spring of 2023, I found myself utterly engrossed in Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty. This haunting tale follows a former musician who takes a job at a mysterious, high-end beauty startup, blending themes of grief, identity, and the dark side of our beauty obsessions. Little did I know I was witnessing the emergence of a trend. At the time, I simply noted its kinship with the imaginative strangeness of Mona Awad’s works, the visceral unpleasantness of Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing, and the sheer peculiarity of Beth Morgan’s A Touch of Jen. I mentally categorized it under a loose umbrella of magical realism, alternate reality, or perhaps speculative fiction.

It wasn’t until I saw the marketing for Mona Awad’s Rouge, about a woman who is drawn to a cult-like spa after her mother’s passing, that I began to notice a recurring theme in recent horror literature. Though I couldn’t get into Rouge and gave up after a few chapters, I soon observed an influx of similar books hitting the shelves. A pattern was emerging – a concentration of horror stories rooted in the fertile soil of wellness culture and influencer glamour. It was as if our collective obsession with youth and beauty had finally coalesced into a specific strain of literary nightmares, emerging from vials of peptide serums and sleek microcurrent devices.

As I immersed myself in these stories, I experienced a moment of alarm. I found myself really noticing, for the first time, the sheer abundance of beauty products in my own bathroom. What had once been a simple shelf of basics had, without my conscious realization, transformed into a small apothecary. Serums, essences, ampoules, and creams in elegant bottles crowded the space, each promising miracles with increasingly complex ingredients and protocols. The realization was jarring – I’d been mindlessly accumulating these products, unconsciously influenced by the very culture these books were critiquing. The volume of products and the pseudo-scientific jargon that accompanied them suddenly felt almost comically overwhelming. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if my bathroom cabinet achieved sentience and started its own wellness blog.

My skincare routine, once a simple cleanse-tone-moisturize affair, had evolved into a complex, multi-step ritual. Each product came with its own set of instructions, optimal times of application, and promises of transformed skin. If my routine gets any longer, I’ll need to start it next Tuesday to be ready for Friday night! It’s a little bit insane.

This cluster of stories seems to draw sustenance for this insanity from our digital age. The carefully curated perfection of social media provides ample shadows for horror to lurk in, each story a cracked mirror reflecting our aspirational selves. In this landscape of distorted reflections, authors are crafting images that unsettle in new and compelling ways, revealing the monstrous potential of our beauty obsessions.

The rise of this beauty-horror trend isn’t happening in a vacuum. Increasing awareness of the beauty industry’s darker sides – from exploitative practices to dangerous products – lends credibility to these horrific tales. The pressure to conform to ever-changing beauty standards, the environmental impact of cosmetic production, and the psychological toll of constant self-scrutiny all provide fertile ground for horror narratives.

As I delved deeper into these works, I found myself becoming increasingly attuned to what I might call a beauty-horror wavelength. It was as if each book was adding another layer to my understanding, priming me for what was to come. This realization hit home when I heard about the release of The Substance in cinemas. People started discussing screenings before I’d even caught a glimpse of the trailer or heard a whisper about the plot. At this point in time, I have only seen movie posters and a few friends’ reactions online. I am deliberately staying away from trailers and reviews because I want to go into it knowing nothing about the story itself, only armed with the knowledge of everything else I have been absorbing. Interestingly, from the title alone, I had a strong inkling of what it might be about. This past year and a half of immersion in beauty-centric horror had been preparing me for it, and I hadn’t even realized it.

The arrival of The Substance feels particularly timely, though it’s hardly the first film to explore the horrors of beauty culture – one need only recall the body horror of The Neon Demon or the satirical edge of Death Becomes Her.  I must admit, though, that I’ll likely wait to watch it at home. Even before the pandemic, I found myself reluctantly acknowledging that I don’t particularly enjoy the cinema experience. The chatter, the noise, the sight of bare feet propped on seats – it’s all beyond my control. At home, I have a handle on things: I can pause for snacks or to take dozens of screencaps and avoid the anxious compulsion to shush my fellow viewers (an urge I resist but resent having in the first place). Also, I have a tiny bladder; it’s much easier to take pee breaks at home!

There’s a certain irony in preferring to experience these tales of beauty-obsessed dystopias in the comfort of my own carefully curated space, but perhaps it’s fitting. After all, isn’t the pressure to conform to beauty standards often most insidious in our private moments? It’s in these intimate settings – our bathrooms, our bedrooms – where we often confront our reflections and grapple with societal expectations. Perhaps that’s why the beauty-horror subgenre resonates so deeply; it taps into the anxieties that lurk in our most personal spaces.

This connection between beauty, horror, and what we do in our personal spaces is explored in several titles I’ve encountered in what turned out to be an unintentional deep dive into this emerging subgenre…

The Glow by Jessie Gaynor follows desperate publicist Jane Dorner as she becomes entangled in a bizarre wellness retreat. Gaynor’s novel stands out with its self-aware humor, a refreshing change in the sometimes stifling atmosphere of wellness retreat horror.

Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica takes us deeper, following a 35-year-old former Instagram influencer now working behind a cosmetic counter. On the eve of a high-risk surgery to reverse all her past plastic surgeries, she’s forced to confront her traumatic past.

youthjuice by E.K. Sathue follows Sophia, a copywriter who joins a skincare company with a too-good-to-be-true product. While it aims to critique beauty influencer culture, the novel fails to dig beneath the surface. In a subgenre that demands fresh perspectives on our beauty-obsessed world, youthjuice unfortunately adds little to the conversation.

Yet it’s Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang that truly captivates. Huang’s prose is lyrical yet doesn’t veer into purple territory, creating a beautiful meditation on grief, family, and beauty itself. The story skewers the cult of beauty in a surreal and somewhat satirical way, while maintaining a gorgeous sincerity.

As I write this, I’ve just begun reading the recently published Snake Oil by Kelsey Rae Dimberg, and while it’s too early for me to offer any personal insights, the premise alone is enticing. Dimberg’s novel follows three women caught in the orbit of Radical, a billion-dollar wellness company.  I’m particularly intrigued by how it might explore the tension between empowerment rhetoric and exploitative practices often found in these spaces, and as I continue reading, I’m curious to see how it fits into the broader landscape of beauty-horror we’ve been exploring.

In the midst of this fictional exploration, I stumbled upon a work that cuts straight to the heart of the matter: Gore-Geous: Personal Essays on Beauty and Horror by Alexandra West. West, whom I already admired from her brilliant discussions on the Faculty of Horror podcast, has crafted something truly special here. In these essays, West deftly explores the intersection of beauty standards, societal pressures, and horror films. She delves into how horror narratives often reflect and critique our obsession with physical perfection, examining everything from body modification nightmares to the terror of aging in a youth-obsessed culture. West’s insightful analysis unpacks the harmful messages we receive about beauty and how horror films can serve as a space to challenge these norms. Her words, “Horror is a haven for me when the world feels too obtuse, moronic, or basic,” resonated with me deeply, encapsulating how horror can offer a critical lens through which to view our beauty-obsessed world.

As I contemplate this landscape of beauty-horror, both fictional and analytical, I find myself both continually unsettled and intrigued. The genre seems to be holding up a funhouse mirror to our society, reflecting our obsessions and anxieties in grotesque new forms. From the promise of snail mucin for dewy, glass-like skin to the allure of vampire facials, each innovation in beauty tech seems to offer new, fodder for horror narratives. I’m half expecting my next face mask to come with a liability waiver and a living will.

While I eagerly await The Substance‘s streaming debut, I’m not exactly starved for beauty-horror content. In our current landscape of late-stage capitalism and entrenched patriarchy, the well of beauty-related anxieties seems bottomless. Each new product, each impossible standard, each ’empowering’ marketing campaign seems to birth another grotesque narrative. It’s a genre that, unfortunately, may never struggle for inspiration.

Thoughts? Feelings? Favorite beauty routine YouTubers? I am all slightly elongated and probably not very aesthetically pleasing ears…!

P.S. If you have made it this far, I have a confession: tonight I watched Death Becomes Her for the first time. This entire post was inspired by how much I just really didn’t want to write about that movie.

Day Nineteen of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021

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