Body horror and botched beauty: The genre that comments on our obsessions with appearances

We are perceived through our bodies: from the sheen of our skin and the way clothes drape over our stomachs, to the shape of our eyes, the angle of our noses and the curve of our hips; every little thing is noticed. 

Despite efforts to tame the body, there is no absolute control over our appearances. We live in a world that demands specific beauty standards, that pressures us to look a certain way — but the body will not allow it. 

We use makeup, extensions, fillers, expensive clothing, serums, surgeries, accessories and creams, yet nothing shifts us into the suitable appearance we toil and yearn for. It creates a sense of dread, an existential crisis that distorts our not-quite-right bodies into objects of horror.

Authors of the body horror sub-genre use that desperation, that willingness to do anything to our bodies for beauty, and twist it into a grotesque narrative that comments on our obsessions. 

Their novels portray the decay, the preservation, the fragmentation and the assimilation of the body in deeply disturbing stories of true horror. More frightening, though, is that these tales are rooted in truth, based on the current craze of beauty expectations. 

Decay: The Act of Ruination

One element of the body horror genre is decay: the breaking down and rotting of the body. It often appears as a body betraying its owner through illness, leaving them helpless and desperate to halt deterioration. 

In her novel, “Rouge,” Mona Awad writes of a lonely woman who watches her mother’s plunge into decay. The death of her mother terrifies Mirabelle. It’s the realization that, with time, youth and beauty will evade her — and death is her only fate. 

Mirabelle becomes obsessed with halting death, and descends into a pursuit of irreversible beauty. Her spiral shows the terror that comes with the sudden understanding that our appearance will forever fluctuate — cursed by the bodies that house us. 

Awad’s story, too, comments on the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters regarding beauty, and how it is often a girl’s mother who first introduces societal beauty standards. 

Preservation: A Refusal of Time

The element of preservation denies decay by trapping a consciousness in a state of stagnation: where a person refuses to allow their body to wither, regardless of the sacrifice. Authors use the theme to criticize the agelessness of the beauty industry and the societal desire for youth. 

For women, appearing younger than your age is expected. It’s predatorial, feeding off of men’s vulgare cravings. The men of society pressure women to look young, to remain ageless, as if their perception of beauty is smooth-skinned, “pure” sixteen year-olds. 

We see it in the celebrities who are supposed to be 40, yet look as if they’re 25. Or the 65 year-old who doesn’t have a single wrinkle. “You look so good,” we tell them, further encouraging their hunger for youth. 

E.K Sathue comments on that need for body preservation in her novel “Youthjuice.” The book depicts a woman working at a wellness company (named after the Greek goddess of youth, no less), who becomes addicted to their “youthjuice.” Even after learning of its gruesome secret ingredient, she cannot bring herself to quit using the serum. 

It’s an example of the lengths we will go and the lines we will cross for beauty and youthfulness in a society that demands it.  

Fragmentation: Made up of Pieces

The recently popular body horror genre, first coined as a term in 1983 for describing film, has a long history in literature.

Its roots are in gothic literature and science fiction, with Mary Shelley’s 1818 “Frankenstein” being an early example. “Frankenstein” also delves into the body horror theme of fragmentation, which depicts the body being broken apart and, sometimes, stitched back together. 

In the modern era of plastic surgery, fillers, makeup and extensions, authors use the theme of fragmentation to emphasize never feeling whole when our bodies are fragments of manufactured beauty.  

Daniel J. Volpe’s “Plastic Monsters” portrays the same sense of dread towards decay that other novels write of, but his main character is so desperate for preservation, for an ageless beauty, that she’ll go to any extreme. Beauty is pain, but beauty is everything. 

The horror story turns into one of botched beauty, asking at what point a person is still human if they are artificially stitched together. 

“Plastic Monsters” also depicts the woman spending great sums of money for perfection, a commentary on the exploitative, profit-driven beauty industry that feeds off of our obsessions.    

Assimilation: One Look Fits All

The assimilation element of body horror focuses on the body being absorbed into something larger, becoming one with a collective. It is used as a metaphor for conformity, and the ways in which individuals lose their identity through the obligation to fit societal beauty standards.  

In Alexis Henderson’s “House of Hunger,” a young woman is drawn into a high-class house where blood is power. The novel comments on how the beauty of others draws a person in, convincing them to look just like those who are deemed perfect. 

It is another thing we commonly see in the media: the same faces, the same hair-styles and the same body types. All made possible by a person’s fear of decay and their desire of preservation through fragmentation.

The body horror genre critiques our obsessive desire for perfection, but it also depicts women who are chained to the societies that decide what perfect looks like.

It is not simply an individual desperation, but a societal standard that influences how every beauty company operates in it’s quest for women’s money. Authors of the genre use their novels to illustrate the problem in horrific, eye-opening narratives of agony.

• beauty
• beauty industry
• horror
• horror books