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Each month, the SELF Well-Read Book Club highlights a timely, delightful, and crucial book on a subject that helps readers live better lives. So far, we’ve covered everything from the politics of running to the state of modern motherhood.
As a certain pop star once sang, “August slipped away.” Though the summer may be winding down, along with many of its trademark pleasures (long hours of daylight, balmy temperatures, ripe vegetables), one thing we’re not ready to give up is the sacred ritual of indulging in a good, juicy novel. So this month, for the SELF Well-Read Book Club, we’re reading one together—for the first time, no less. And once you dig into its uncanny plot, you’ll quickly see why we’re declaring it a must-read.
Natural Beauty, writer Ling Ling Huang’s debut novel, follows an unnamed narrator—a musical prodigy and the child of Chinese immigrants—who takes a job at a high-end med spa to make ends meet. Quickly, her life becomes a wellness dystopia: Crabs that suck out neurotoxins, viper venom for pouty lips, and an unsettling amount of body horror lurk beneath the surface at Holistik, where she works. We’d recommend it to anyone intrigued by girlboss discourse, sci-fi, love triangles, mysteries, and injectables, or who has ever thought, What if there was an episode of Black Mirror inspired by Goop? (Oh, and don’t worry, it’s not scary, or even entirely serious—Huang’s satire is spot-on, and there’s plenty of humor too.)
Huang first came up with the idea for Natural Beauty while working at a wellness store in New York, much like her protagonist. (Also like her protagonist, Huang is a professional musician.) “When I started the book, it was just on my notes app as complaints about customers I was dealing with,” she tells SELF. Huang also cites another unlikely source of inspiration: Shrek. “I was eight or nine when Shrek came out, and I was so certain that he would become a prince at the end,” she says. “But when the princess became an ogre instead, it was the first time I was confronted with my own misogyny—the belief that women should always be beautiful. And so I feel like a lot of my life has been processing Shrek.”
Below, Huang answers our questions about her experience in the wellness industry, her perspectives on self-care today, her influences when writing, and the best and worst treatments she’s ever received. Check out the conversation below, and order your copy of Natural Beauty here. Happy reading!
When I was writing this, I was very jaded. I drank the Kool-Aid so hard when I was working at the wellness store. Then, when I started realizing how beauty and wellness had co-opted my entire personality and my attention, I went through some really cynical times. A lot of this book was me navigating that cynicism and trying to make space again to have a relationship with something that I initially really enjoyed.
Now, after writing it, I think I’ve found more of a balance. I question things that I buy more, and I feel like I’m not as susceptible to marketing gimmicks and trends. Everything that I purchase, I’m trying to honor myself as I am and my ancestors. So I am less jaded now. The wellness industry is as evil as we want to make it—by giving it power—and hopefully this book questions that power. I sometimes joke that this will be a nonfiction book in a few years. Some of the treatments that I thought that I invented I later found out were already a thing, and then I had to go back and try to invent something scarier.
I have a history of eating disorders, and I work pretty hard not to slide back into that kind of behavior again. Well, I realized I was backsliding. It is so natural for wellness to be entangled with beauty and looking a certain way, and that started affecting me. I was also spending way too much money that I didn’t have. I think I went to a concert and I was like, I forgot that I love music, which had been my career for so long. I was trying to remember other aspects of my personality and I was kind of like, I don’t even know who I am. If the whole day you’re thinking about what you’re going to eat or drink and what you’re putting on your skin, very quickly there’s no space for any other thoughts.
I think a lot of what I loved about skin care and beauty and wellness was that there was always new stuff to try and just so many promises being made to you all the time. Now I try to get that fix in other ways, whether it’s through podcasts, reading, TV, or just finding new ideas. I’m trying to make that as sexy as new products in my life. I spend a lot more time outdoors and that’s really great—there’s almost nothing about a hike that’s homogenous. There’s no trees that look similar. I have pared down my skin care in the sense that I don’t look for new products—I just use my three things, and I use those only if I feel like it. I try to listen to my body and eat whatever it wants to eat. So it’s a really different and new kind of relationship. I’m trying to be intuitive.
Your career, or your job, is not the sum total of who you are. You’re a more complex person. We’re all enough as we are. I really believe that.
I love directors Julia Ducournau and David Cronenberg, also Ari Aster. Midsommar was just really transcendental for me. I didn’t know that what I wrote was body horror—it was just when I started meeting with producers for the TV show that they were throwing those words around and I was like, Yeah, totally. Incorporating horror was so natural to me when writing, because if you’re writing about a woman’s body in America, of course it’s going to be a body horror. So it wasn’t really intentional to work in that genre, but it’s one that resonates the most with my experience here.
Probably The Waves by Virginia Woolf. The second one, I’d say, is the entire Neapolitan novels collection by Elena Ferrante. They have been so influential to me in terms of how I relate to women in my life. The third is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I just missed that main character so much after reading it.
I listen to a lot of Beethoven—his late quartets and slow movements. I listen to symphonies. And then besides that, I love Frank Ocean, James Blake, Dan Deacon, and Mitski.
I’ve had some pretty amazing body work massages. There’s a package you can get at Pearl Spa in San Francisco—it’s three hours long and there’s no part of you that’s untouched. They scrub away everything until you’re a brand-new person. It’s wild—you’re just their play-thing on the table. I loved that. I did have an amazing facial at Biologique Recherche in Paris—I wanted to do the mothership thing.
Something that happens to me often is what I call “avocado face.” This happened a lot when I was working at the store: I’ll try something new and within a few moments, my skin would raise and become red and leathery. It would really feel like an avocado. And then I would have to go on steroids—it wouldn’t go away by itself.
I had some weird responses to the supplements I was taking when I was working at the store too—just supreme vertigo. I would get out of bed and not be able to stand up. It happened after I took something to help me sleep, full of different mushrooms. But it was just so normal among my coworkers to be having different responses to supplements and products that I think I took it again, and the same thing happened. So then I was like, Okay, maybe no more.
Self-care should support you, support the culture you were born with, and support your feelings any given time. If that means throwing on a face mask, that’s great, but I never want anyone—and myself especially—to purchase something out of fear, insecurity, or a constant desire to be someone else, which I really struggled with for so many years.
If you’re ever feeling insecure, know that it’s not a natural feeling, necessarily. Question if something or someone has made you feel that way, and whether that really needs to be your response. And just watch Shrek.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
