Wellness to Die For: Beauty Standards Meet Body Horror
"One of the benefits of paying attention to the world of fiction is that you start to notice patterns. For instance, in the horror and thriller genres, trends often develop that mirror contemporary social anxieties. The stuff we worry about, as a people, inevitably turns up in the stories we tell ourselves. Things like, oh, artificial intelligence, climate concerns, and interesting disease vectors into the human body. It happens in film, television, and theater, too.
Recently, our editorial team spotted a clear uptick in new books that we've affectionately dubbed Goop Horror. These are stories that explore the darker aspects of the beauty and wellness industry, along with adjacent concepts—influencer culture, celebrity gurus, and the bleeding edge of near-future sci-fi biotech. These books tend toward female perspectives, and there's a definite sociocultural resonance at the heart of it all."
avg. score: 1 of 30 (3%)
required scores: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
