A Body Horror Critique Of 'Ozempic Culture' And Perfection

Ryan Murphy returning to body horror feels less like a genre pivot and more like a confession. The Beauty lands in a moment where the pursuit of perfection is no longer aspirational but compulsory. The premise is blunt on purpose. A sexually transmitted miracle drug that makes you flawless until it kills you is not subtle metaphor. It’s Ozempic culture, face-tuning apps, wellness pipelines, luxury self-optimization. All of it compressed into one infection you can’t undo.

What makes it interesting is not the shock value but the framing. Beauty here is not rare or elite. It’s viral. Democratic. Contagious. Everyone can have it, which means it stops meaning anything. The horror isn’t the gore. It’s the realization that perfection, once accessible, becomes another form of social pressure. You’re not chasing beauty. You’re keeping up with it.

Fashion, power, and who gets to survive

Setting the story inside the high-fashion ecosystem is surgical. Models, runways, luxury tech billionaires, shadowy corporations. These are industries already built on bodies as capital. The FBI agents function less as heroes and more as witnesses, moving through a world that has already decided the cost is worth it.

The casting leans into that tension. Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall bring credibility and restraint, but the real commentary lives in the ensemble. Bella Hadid, Amelia Gray Hamlin, Nicola Peltz Beckham. People whose real-world proximity to beauty economies collapses the distance between fiction and critique. It’s uncomfortable in a way that feels intentional. You’re not watching an abstract system. You’re watching one that already exists, just pushed a few degrees further.

Ryan Murphy, restrained but not redeemed

Murphy’s work often drowns in excess. The Beauty looks like it understands that excess is the subject, not the method. Early imagery suggests something colder, more clinical. Less camp. More decay under glass. If it works, it will be because it resists turning beauty into spectacle and instead lets it rot quietly.

The body horror is just the last honest symptom.

If The Beauty sticks the landing, it won’t be because it’s shocking. It’ll be because it feels uncomfortably familiar.