Stream It Or Skip It: 'One More Time' On Netflix, A Swedish Time Travel Comedy About Getting To Re-Live Your Best Day Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Nurse' On Netflix, A Danish Drama About A New Nurse That Suspects That A Colleague Is Killing Patients Stream It Or Skip It: ‘There There’ on Hulu, A Talky Compendium of Short Scenes with a Clever Visual Trick Is 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' Streaming on HBO Max or Netflix? Where Was 'John Mulaney: Baby J' on Netflix Filmed? Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Kiss, Kiss!’ on Netflix, a Polish Rom-Com With an Oogy Womanizer Protagonist Stream It or Skip It: 'The Wedding Cottage' on Hallmark Casts Erin Krakow and Brendan Penny as Unlikely Wedding Planners Rachael Leigh Cook Explains Why Romantic Comedies Will Never Die: “Cortisol-Free Entertainment” Stream It or Skip It: 'A Pinch of Portugal' on Hallmark, Where Heather Hemmens Accidentally Goes from Prep Chef to Celeb Chef Jazmine Hughes is a staff writer for The Times Magazine.‘A Tourist’s Guide to Love’ Filming Locations: Where Was the Rachael Leigh Cook Movie Filmed? Huang asks: What - or who - are we willing to sacrifice in order to become beautiful, and what happens if it all gets stripped away? As the proverb goes: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting.” But where does it go? The novel is a meditation on vanity, the ways in which the pursuit of physical beauty can betray the other sources of beauty in one’s life, and how horror can lurk beneath the surface of even the most poreless skin. Yet in the world of Holistik, power, satisfaction and value are best obtained by pubic hair transplants, procedures to maintain a tooth gap, diamond freckling and an arcane, elevated religion called “Dianaism” (which encourages people to be more like Princess Diana) - all seen as undeniable improvements to the self, disregarding the restless, sweaty panic that informs each appointment or idea. When Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” she was not referring to a Botox drive-through. And she is at her best when she skewers the narcissistic, corrosive version of self-care that can be mistaken for empowerment. Her talents (Huang is a classically trained violinist, and “Natural Beauty” is her debut novel) harmonize most seamlessly when she writes about music, managing the near-impossible feat of crafting descriptions of the compositions that are as airy and adroit as the melodies themselves. spinning away from a song right as you were getting into a groove. In cosmetic terms, Huang’s plot needs some light blotting: The novel’s turn into horror feels inevitable and yet still jarring, like a D.J. Is there anything more comforting in life than knowing what to fear? At Holistik, they teach me what I need to be afraid of to become beautiful.” Caution becomes paranoia and, eventually, fear. Holistik, in its pursuit and commodification of perfection, tracks its employees for optimization: “What starts as an enthusiasm for improvement becomes an all-consuming infatuation. In need of a well-paying job to support them, she ends up at Holistik, a beauty company that straddles the cutting edge of technology, situated right between innovation and danger. When she asks the only man she sleeps with more than once if he might have feelings for her, he only stammers something about how talented she is.Īfter one of her performances, her parents get into a terrible accident, and the narrator leaves piano playing behind, convinced her hobby and selfishness are to blame. The narrator soon becomes, as many people of color do, a mascot for the school, paraded around at events and fund-raisers as she is bullied and excluded by her peers. When we meet our unnamed protagonist, she’s a piano-playing child prodigy whisked away from her Chinese immigrant parents to live, perform and suffer at a restrictive, racist music conservatory. Ling Ling Huang understands this neurosis, and in “Natural Beauty,” she plumps it up into its most profane. Money may not buy happiness, but it can secure confidence, which is close enough. The pursuit of improvement was more than skin-deep: Every shopping trip offered the possibility that I would find the product that would change everything, not only my visage but my very nature. At certain points in my 20s, it might’ve been hard for a person to distinguish my annual spending at Sephora from the G.D.P.
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