The Beauty

Ryan Murphy’s latest series is sweet relief for anyone who misses the body horror of American Horror Story. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to The Substance (and starring Demi Moore’s ex-husband, Ashton Kutcher, no less), The Beauty is a subversive takedown of the aesthetics epidemic.

Against the abrasive wailing of The Prodigy’s classic 90s tune Firestarter, the series starts with a high-end fashion show in Paris. A model (aptly played by supermodel Bella Hadid) struts the catwalk in red leather before entering what initially appears to be a demonic trance. The fashion show ends in carnage and a stomach-churningly gory pre-credits crescendo.

Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall play FBI agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett. The friends-with-benefits are working to unravel the deadly virus, ie “The Beauty”, affecting the world’s most stunning people. “Beauty is pain,” Jordan opines, highlighting that succumbence to impossible aesthetic standards is by no means limited to naïve young adults.

Witnessing the epidemic is Jeremy (Jeremy Pope), himself obsessed with looksmaxxing. Kutcher plays nihilistic tech billionaire the Corporation, who invents “The Beauty”, a cosmetic enhancement and STD; the Assassin (Anthony Ramos) is contracted to do his bidding. This makes way for grisly, The Fly-esque scenes of bodily mutilation.

With the rise of social media filters and injectables, absurd beauty standards that create identikit faces and bodies are now ubiquitous. Accordingly, the series is a worthy antidote to this. There are allusions to the increasingly pervasive use of GLP-1s by people who don’t medically need them, incel culture, and the inherent problematic nature of idealised, invariably Eurocentric, facial features. A plastic surgeon with cartoonish cheek implants embodies this eugenicist undertone, blaming people’s supposed unattractiveness on “genetic blandness”. 

In spite of a fantastic cast and pertinent social commentary, there’s a certain uneasiness to all this. Like some of Murphy’s previous works, notably the widely criticised Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the series does veer into sensationalism. The constant sex and violence feel exploitative at times, though the grotesquerie is arguably a symbolic manifestation of the death of natural beauty.

Entertaining viewing for both horror aficionados and critics of the unprecedented rise of tweakments, the show is a visceral response to the beauty industrial complex. The Beauty offers welcome food for thought (just don’t consume it on a full stomach).