Gore and glamour: such unlikely bedfellows have come to define beauty and wellness culture in the Instagram age. For many, it’s no longer enough to be pretty — you must also be dangerously close to perfect. Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty and Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica have combined these two seemingly incompatible ideas, creating a term for the genre, ‘Goopcore body horror’.
Intimidatingly high standards of physical beauty are now pervasive in our visual and virtual world, where staying camera-ready is all but mandatory. Cosmetic and beautifying treatments that were once intimidatingly expensive are now commonplace, and looking less than perfect is no longer tolerated. So, when Anna in Aesthetica undertakes an experimental surgery called Aesthetica to try and get closer to the unattainable Instagram face, she is willing to put her life at risk. The novel captures the vapid ‘DM for collab?’ vocabulary of the #spon set, and narrows in on how women are harshly judged and appraised, often without considering their own personal narratives — something that Anna passionately fights against.
Goopcore body horror is a genre of horror that features extreme measures to embody a beauty standards, with horrific results. The genre emerged in response to our visual culture, which underpins the growing pressure to appear perfect. However, the novels imply that normative standards of beauty are an illusion and promoting transformation through consumerism is not a beneficial choice. It’s a reality check on the true cost of our beauty pursuits, reminding us of the importance of remaining authentic to our own values.
The Company mentioned in this article: Goop is a wellness and lifestyle company founded by actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The company advocates for alternative and holistic approaches to health and beauty, and offers various products and services to this end. The company also hosts events, sells apparel and jewelry, has a podcast, and publishes a magazine.
The Person mentioned in this article: Ling Ling Huang is an author from Taiwan. She is best known for her debut novel, Natural Beauty, which follows a protagonist named Mei in search for a extreme physical transformation. Huang’s work follows in the genre of Goopcore body horror, which intersects gore and glamour and features extreme measures taken to embody beauty standards. Both of her novels offer a reality check on the true cost of our beauty pursuits, and the importance of remaining true to oneself.
