{"id":31096,"date":"2023-08-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/11\/the-pursuit-of-beauty-fuels-a-dark-streak-in-fiction\/"},"modified":"2023-08-11T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T12:00:00","slug":"the-pursuit-of-beauty-fuels-a-dark-streak-in-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/11\/the-pursuit-of-beauty-fuels-a-dark-streak-in-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pursuit of Beauty Fuels a Dark Streak in Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\u201cWe smile while our faces burn, we love it so. Because we know magic is happening, just like in a fairy tale.\u201d By the time Mirabelle Nour\u2014the narrator of Mona Awad\u2019s latest novel, Rouge<\/em><\/a> (Marysue Rucci Books)\u2014speaks this gauzy ode to exfoliation into the mirror, she is already in too deep. With acid-based toners, yes, but more troublingly with a rogue spa, the same one that wooed her late mother before a sudden tumble off a California cliff. Set in a modern world of skin care tutorials and microcurrent devices, the book trades in age-old symbols: poison roses, an imagined prince in the guise of Top Gun<\/em>\u2013era Tom Cruise, \u201cfairest\u201d defined by racialized norms. This quest for eerily preserved beauty unravels Belle\u2019s memory and language (she swaps insanity<\/em> for vanity, ridicule<\/em> for ritual)<\/em> before the book reaches a vivid body-horror climax. Rouge<\/em> has already been optioned for film, proof that beauty extremes have a certain subset gripped. \u201cAfter all,\u201d says the spa\u2019s Woman in Red, \u201cself-care is really our only escape from the Abyss, is it not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who has a passing familiarity with the phrase hyaluronic acid<\/em> has heard some version of that message\u2014the siren call of an oceanic beauty and wellness industry. A stack of recent fiction digs into this anxiety, though whether such novels qualify as an escape depends on how entwined a reader feels with this complicated slice of culture.<\/p>\n

Allie Rowbottom\u2019s Aesthetica<\/em><\/a> (Soho Press) was a perceptive entry<\/a> last fall, prefiguring a wave of influencer remorse. In it, Anna Wrey, at 19, disses her mother\u2019s outdated feminism in favor of \u201cmy body, my content\u201d digital empowerment. Now 35 (\u201cI don\u2019t bother using face recognition, it never works for me\u201d), she has booked one final surgery: a high-risk procedure that is like a factory reset, undoing every last modification. The Glow<\/em><\/a> (Random House), Jessie Gaynor\u2019s debut novel, centers on a conspiring PR woman who transforms a small-scale healer into a wellness machine, with the sour taste of monetized authenticity.<\/p>\n

The promise of self-improvement is darkly seductive. In Ling Ling Huang\u2019s Natural Beauty<\/em><\/a> (Dutton)\u2014released this spring and in development for a television adaptation with Constance Wu coproducing\u2014a former pianist working at a biotech-funded wellness store initially thrills at her regimen\u2019s effects (defined eyelids, opalescent skin). By the end, her dismissal of rigid aesthetics is what lingers: \u201cThat fine line between beauty and ugliness, ripeness and rot, is what keeps an audience listening with held breath.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018Aesthetica\u2019 by Allie Rowbottom<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018The Glow\u2019 by Jessie Gaynor<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018Natural Beauty\u2019 by Ling Ling Huang<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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\u201cWe smile while our faces burn, we love it so. Because we know magic is happening, just like in a fairy tale.\u201d By the time Mirabelle Nour\u2014the narrator of Mona Awad\u2019s latest novel, Rouge (Marysue Rucci Books)\u2014speaks this gauzy ode to exfoliation into the mirror, she is already in too deep. With acid-based toners, yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[94,818],"class_list":{"0":"post-31096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-books"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}