Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang is an essential read for anyone who dares to challenge the status quo regarding beauty and wellness standards and their commodification in the endless pursuit of “beauty” and “health” while contributing to overconsumption, troubling beauty and wellness trends, and cultural erasure in favor of the Eurocentric ideal.
What is Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang About?
Huang introduces you to an anonymous young woman who’s struggling financially to care for her parents following a tragic accident that led her to abandon her dream of becoming a pianist. While working at a restaurant as a dishwasher, a beautiful woman named Saje poaches her for a position at her clean beauty and wellness store, Holistik, with the promise of higher pay and greater financial security.
While there, the narrator becomes enthralled by the beauty and wellness products and procedures, and before she knows it, she finds her identity and beliefs about beauty challenged as the sinister truth about Holistik and its owner comes to the surface.
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Genre:
Horror, Literary, Social, Body, Queer
Publication Date:
April 4, 2023
Author Background:
Ling Ling Huang is an accomplished violinist who has performed with numerous esteemed orchestras and symphonies. She began learning the violin at age four and transitioned to serious study at age fifteen. From there, her talent grew as she received awards and commendations for her artistry, leading to continued research and opportunities to perform with various orchestras and symphonies. Regarding her literary works, Huang’s debut novel, Natural Beauty, was published in 2023 and explores the unhealthy pursuit of beauty through questionable health and wellness tactics.
Themes:
The commodification of beauty, the erasure of identity, the obsession with perfection, performance, and authenticity, feminism and the female body, art, talent, and sacrifice, capitalism, and the illusion of wellness.
Content/Trigger Warnings
Body horror, medical and scientific manipulation, psychological distress, eating disorders and disordered eating, death and violence, loss and grief
Natural Beauty Book Review
Craft & Style
At its core, Natural Beauty is a literary horror about identity. You continually encounter the narrator struggling to find her footing in the world as a second-generation immigrant trying to retain and connect with her culture while also facing the temptation of Western society and Eurocentric beauty and wellness standards.
This novel is brilliantly written, with sharp commentary and a blunt critique of the beauty and wellness industry. Huang’s ability to highlight her points, turning beauty standards into body horror, is superb, showing you the horrifying reality that many of us will go to in the name of beauty.
Huang’s prose is rife with salient points and critiques that prompt thoughtful conversations and reflections. The story’s structure with the unnamed narrator is a beautiful symbol of how the narrator’s relationship with her identity forced her to watch as she morphs and changes, sometimes physically but primarily emotionally and psychologically.
The narrator’s innocence also strikes you as she relays the absurdity of what she witnesses and encounters at Holistik, and how she finds herself time and again excusing the problemativeness of it all.
The plot and pacing felt steady with suitable character development. The narrator wasn’t purely an innocent victim but was also thirsty and eager to shed her identity and become more like the women at Holistik and those she befriended.
Emotional Impact
Having worked in the beauty and wellness industry for over ten years, I felt Huang’s critique and exploration of capitalism and the beauty industry were spot on. I was even impressed by how she detailed the reality of many retail beauty associates’ and industry professionals’ experiences in the workplace.
The competition, the body dysmorphia, the push to sell beauty and perfection to other women using questionable sales and marketing tactics, and how terribly underpaid you are, often make it impossible for you to afford the exorbitant products and procedures you sell.
While her depiction of the various procedures and products was indeed satirical, the reality is that it highlights how consumed we are with seeking outlandish procedures and products with the purest, “cleanest” ingredients. In the end, all of this is really about classism, and in some ways racism, as only the White wealthy elites are the ones these products and procedures are designed and promoted to aid.
Lastly, I felt her critique regarding how Western societies white-wash the beauty and wellness industry, borrowing customs, practices, and trends from Asian cultures and transforming them to prioritize Whiteness and classist ideals, alienating the culture from which they borrowed these practices.
Representation
This novel highlights the Asian American experience transitioning to Western American culture. And while the book is structured to obscure the race and ethnicity of the key players, it all works to the novel’s deeper themes.
Additionally, there is queer representation, as the narrator becomes attracted to her close friend Helen and falls for her.
Huang also gives voice to workers in the beauty and wellness industry, showcasing the problematic practices, unfair pay, and toxic environments that exist in many establishments.
Notable Strengths
This novel is a standout for its honest critique, apt commentary, and satirical take on the beauty and wellness industry. Furthermore, Huang handles the thematic elements beautifully, utilizing literary devices such as symbolism, metaphors, allegory, imagery, personification, juxtaposition, and irony.
Potential Challenges
While Huang’s commentary is brilliant and strikes a chord, it can be heavy-handed as though she’s spoon-feeding you the point. Additionally, the narration style may make it difficult for the reader to engage with and empathize with the character.
Satire and hyperbole expose the absurdity of the beauty and wellness industry and how easily we all accept it. It can lead some readers to find it overdramatized and melodramatic.
Deeper Reflection
Natural Beauty inspires you to question what you’re sold when it comes to beauty and wellness. Is it just a harmless product? Or, is it something more profound, more sinister, built on cultural erasure and misogyny to push a narrative that you’re not enough, and to be successful and worthy, you have to adhere to the current beauty standards?
As you read this novel, take time to reflect on the themes of this novel and ponder whether beauty and wellness are friends or foes.
Who Do I Recommend It To?
This novel is ideal for readers who enjoy exploring themes of identity, bodily autonomy, and how problematic Western beauty standards are—a great introduction to horror for Lit-Fiction fans that want a character-driven social horror.
Join the Conversation
What’s your take on the beauty and wellness industry? How has our obsession with perfection and contrived beauty standards led to overconsumption, body dysmorphia, and poor self-esteem across all generations and eras?
