From the author of Films of the New French Extremity, The 1990 Teen Horror Cycle, and co-host of the Faculty of Horror podcast comes Personal Essays on Beauty and Horror—a collection of essays where West seamlessly blends the genres of the personal essay and film criticism, examining gender norms, beauty standards, and cultural expectations. Personal Essays on Beauty and Horror is a journey through the overlapping darkness of the beauty world and horror films including Cat People (1942), The Witches (1990), Carrie (1976), Black Swan (2010), Audition (1999), Under the Skin (2013), American Psycho (2000) and Ready or Not (2019) among others. “I absolutely tore through Gore-Geous. This is Alex West at her A wildly funny, razor-sharp exploration of what it means to live in a human body and try to feel at home there. Horror needs Alex West, feminism needs Alex West, and I, in particular, need Alex West to keep writing books like this for as long as possible. Read it and see what I mean.” —Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Trainwreck and Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers)