Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes

by Anne Elizabeth Moore

Unspeakable acts are committed on women's bodies under capitalism everyday. In Body Horror, Anne Elizabeth Moore explores the global toll of capitalism on women with thorough research, surprising humor, and ease--especially when examining her own experiences with disease and health care--to create a portrait of contemporary American culture that is gory and fascinating.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Horror, Politics, Social Justice, Queer

229 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 14, 2017

About the author

Anne Elizabeth Moore is an award-winning cultural critic. The Fulbright scholar and Truthout columnist behind Ladydrawers: Gender and Media in the US is also the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), Hey Kidz, Buy This Book (Soft Skull, 2004), Cambodian Grrrl (Cantankerous Titles, 2011), Hip Hop Apsara (Green Lantern Press, 2012) and New Girl Law (Cantankerous Titles, 2013). Co-editor and publisher of now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked with young women in Cambodia on independent media projects, and people of all ages and genders on media justice work in the US. Moore exhibits her work frequently as conceptual art, has been the subject of two documentary films, and has lectured around the world on independent media, globalization, and women’s labor issues. She has written for Al Jazeera, The Baffler, N+1, Good, Snap Judgment, Bitch, the Progressive, The Onion, Feministing, The Stranger, In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, and Tin House.

She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading series. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Today’s Chicago Woman, Windy City Times, and Print magazines, and on GritTV, Radio Australia, and NPR’s Worldview.

Her friend (and one of her favorite fiction writers) Elizabeth Crane wrote a short story about Moore, and it was widely reviewed. Thus the Village Voice called her a “Possibly perfect protagonist”; Washington City Paper said she was “A woman who has always been comfortable in her own skin”; and Hipster Book Club said she was “A perfect altruistic punk-rock super-heroine.” She has appeared on CNN, GritTV, WBEZ, WNUR, WFMU, and Georgian television. Moore recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

In 2016, she was awarded the third permanent residency in Detroit's Write A house program and now lives in a Bengali community in Eastern Michigan.

Reviews

[l · Rating 1 out of 5]

She is an extremely sloppy thinker and it’s extremely frustrating to read tbh. The introduction was the most interesting part: the rest was garbage

Also the jab about “queer” being used by girls who kiss girls at clubs to get male attention, and then saying that she’s queer bc she’s anti capitalist is so hilarious to me. A battle between straight people for the completely meaningless queer label.

Oh, she also believes that misogyny is about hatred of femininity jsyk before wasting your time.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

i started listening to this audiobook a few days before november 5th because i had a bad feeling that it would be the right time for it. here we are.

this is the 2023 edition, revised from the original publication in 2017. so much doom has happened in these years. these essays are hit and miss, and i take issue with some of moore's choices and i do not enjoy her condescension, but i appreciate her ideas.

MASSACRE ON VENG VENG STREET is about 2014 protests and government violence in cambodia. a very alarming piece - serious corruption, remarkable hopelessness when grassroots efforts are shut down with violence. there is international culpability, since the cambodian garment workers demanding fair wages are working to make clothing consumed all over the world.

THE SHAMEFUL LEGACY AND SECRET PROMISE OF THE SANITARY NAPKIN DISPOSAL BAG - arbitrary waste, a dearth of "discretion products" designed to shield half the population from having to think about menstruation.

TIPS, GAGS, AND JOKES FOR GIRLS IN CAPTIVITY - this covid quarantine chapter is surreal. the virus is still among us, but that era of full isolation feels so far gone. moore likens being in quarantine to being a girl stuck at the bottom of a well.

WOMEN is where i started to struggle with some of moore's takes, particularly her assertion that misogyny = hatred of femininity. this is a film analysis piece that discusses rape revenge narratives, the impossibility of embracing the violence of self protection to help eradicate sexual violation.

MODEL EMPLOYEE - parallels between labor struggles in all areas of the fashion industry, such as inhumane conditions and preying on the work of young women. models, retailers, warehouse workers, and garment workers are all segregated but are all systematically disenfranchised.

HORROR AUTOTOXICUS - misogyny in medicine costs women's lives. we know so little about autoimmune disorders, which afflict women at a far higher rate than men. this is an interesting primer on the history of autoimmune disorders.

CONSUMPCYON references atwood's the edible woman, global food production, autoimmune disorders, bodies rejecting capitalism.

A FEW THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT ILLNESS IN AMERICA - dehumanizing culture, sheer isolating horror of being immunocompromised during a pandemic, learning that people who claim to care about you do not care enough to protect you. our entire culture around covid is horribly and inherently ableist. this is an intense personal piece directed at the reader.

FAKE SNAKE OIL!

ON LEAVING THE BIRTHPLACE OF STANDARD TIME explores time as a social construct of capitalism, which can be left behind if one falls out of time via pandemic or illness.

CULTURAL IMPERATIVE - to bear children - tied to capitalist ideas of production.

THE PRESENCE OF NO PRESENT is a piece about lgbt+ disability narrative. the bit about "queer crip" and slur reclamation is interesting, but moore lost me when she started going on about how she identifies as queer because she defies the roles she's been given under capitalism... okay, yikes.

NORMATIVE BODIES, UNUSUAL TASTES is a horror movie piece. body horror as ableist transformation of normative bodies, true crime podcast fandom as an auditory externalization of rage, horror fandom as a quest for an imagined horror that's worse than real life horrors. i was really into this until i got yucked out by moore's misconception that sexual assault = sexual violence against women and women only, and her misconceptions that feminine = female and masculine = male. seriously, WHAT in the reductive hell is this?

THE METAPHYSICS OF COMPOST - inevitability of decay, embracing death, food systems, accessibility.

FUCKING CANCER - cancer is culturally known and autoimmune disorders are unknown. vast injustices, bleakness.

A PARTIAL RECOUNTING OF MY CURRENT ANXIETIES is a hugely relatable covid piece about all the fears, new and old, threatening our wellbeing. hits hard.

THREE MONTHS AFTER EMERGING FROM YOUR DEATHBED is perhaps the most personal piece in the book, about small pleasures in life, fundamental misunderstanding, reckoning with death.

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays only get better as you read on, getting to know her voice, which is intelligent, insightful, sarcastic, and funny in the face of doom-laden subject matter. I had a slow start for whatever reason, but I ended up liking it a lot.

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited about this book, but it fell far short of my expectations. Moore draws on many primary texts, events, experiences, little known facts, and phenomena that are interesting - or seem to be, from her relatively limited treatment of them - but her writing is so frenetic, jumping from topic to topic within a given essay it is sometimes difficult to see the connection from one part of the essay to the next, or how parts of the discussion serve her overall point; or if she is even tracing the same point from beginning to end.

I also take serious issue with Moore's co-opting of terminologies that belong to other movements and groups, as well as her comparison of Cambodian garment workers and American women in the field of modeling. On both of these issues Moore speaks from a place of privilege that I don't think she fully understands or accepts.

If nothing else, Moore's insights about much of her own experience coming to terms with and living as a person with disabilities that are under studied because they primarily affect women are important

[Jason Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of essays that pays an homage to a genre of horror films and novels (body horror) by using them as a springboard to discuss the horrors women face under a patriarchal capitalism (particularly in work, entertainment, and medicine). The author outlines some of these horrors as a close observer (Massacre on Veng Street) or as a quasi survivor (Fucking Cancer). Her writing style does take some getting used to, but the patient reader is rewarded with trenchant observations. Metaphysics of Compost is one of the most delightful essays in this collection. Moore leverages her experience with farming (an experience that she uses to highlight the complementary relationship between life and decay) to shatter some of the most harmful myths (purity in relation to consumption) perpetuated by the mainstream food movement. She also demonstrates that the movement's current focus (on sustainability and consumption) are distractions -- arguing that 'the relationships forged by what we eat and how it is acquired are as equally important to the nutritional properties of what is ingested.'

I'd recommend this book to everyone (so much so that I've bought 9 additional copies and gifted them to my friends).

[Liza Rodimtseva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Passionate writing not is necessarily good writing and passionate thoughts are not always being clever ones. Like many essay collections, it jumps about wildly, both in subject and in quality. In some moments, Moore writes poetically about her existential experiences as a chronically ill person, at others she dips into the livid prose of a first-year discourse student. It was no surprise to find that most of these works were originally published online, or not published at all. When Moore is at her best, her rage is palpable; when she unpacks the many, many ways the American medical industry has systematically failed the millions of patients like herself - mostly female for unknown reasons - who suffer from autoimmune disease; or how the garment industry exploits the labor of female workers from sweatshop seamstresses to runway models. On the other hand, some of her ideas are nonsensical, like the intellectual contortion with which she attempts to sew a connection between our culture's infuriating expectation that it is a woman's social debt to bear children and - drum roll, wait for it - the history of U.S. patent law. Just because two things are both rooted in patriarchal beliefs, as most things are, doesn't mean they're in any way correlated. Even more, sometimes Moore falls, with unintended hilarity, into the trope of the outrage-hungry feminist screaming "Sexist!" at inanimate objects, like when she explains how the lowly sanitary napkin disposal bag is a "horrifying" manifestation of masculinist society's revulsion towards female bodies. Interesting thesis, but never does it occur to her that a blood-soaked tampon is in all actuality a biohazard and ought to be disposed of as such. It's not 'internalized misogyny' to not want to encounter another woman's menstrual waste, and sexism is not the reason women are encouraged to bag up their biowaste any more than it's sexist to train hotel maids not to handle soiled linens with their bare hands.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I didn’t have any background in research, this would probably be closer to a five star read. Anne Elizabeth Moore is a journalist and a cultural critic with an amazing body of work (I’ll definitely be reading New Girl Law: Drafting a Future for Cambodia). But this collection of essays is a bit all over the place and her train of thought is very sloppy.

Some of the essays were brutally good (I really liked reading the ones about women in Cambodia and IBS). Informative and challenging things like the model industry, fast fashion and its impact on women in developing countries, etc. Some others were failures. I think this is a book that aims to wake you up, shake you, and make you angry at the world, but some of the things were a bit cherry-picked to get the point across. I.e., the talk about the bags to dispose of menstrual items being indirectly meant to say menstrual products are so shameful they need a separate bag. This has to do with many other things (such as the health and safety of the workers in landfills and ‘reminding’ women to not throw them down the toilet, etc.).

Moore tackled topics that I have researched so as I read, I kept just agreeing a little but thinking counterpoints that the author didn’t include or neglected to mention.

At the beginning of the book Moore warns the readers of two things: her politically incorrect humor and that the essays don’t have much connection. Let’s address this real quick. 1) I found no humor in this book. No jokes. And 2) I agree. And you can warn me all you want but this just felt like a really bizarre concoction of a book if none of the essays have a chinchilla of connection between them. We go from the disparity of genders in the fast fashion industry to a critique of a movie, then to IBS, then to standardized time zones? Like I don’t get it. (And speaking of which, the one essay about standardizing time zones in the US is perhaps the least interesting and most confusing thing I’ve read this year. WHO CARES. Do we need to get angry at everything?) (AND while at it, are we not allowed to like anything? The excruciating essay about horror movies and women angered me. Why do I need to explain or justify liking horror movies as a woman? The author rambles about how she likes horror because of her dysfunctional family or health issues. Why the need to justify it? We’re allowed to like things ffs. Do we also like apples because of daddy issues now?)

3 stars. I enjoyed it but I do think there was some cherry picking data in some of the essays and some were complete failures for me (the one about I Spit On Your Grave. I haven’t even heard about the movie so it was very much an ‘ok, so?’ type of thing for me).

PS. Something I struggled with is... well, the author says they’re ‘queer’ but as far as I understand Moore is a cis straight white woman. They say they’re ‘queer’ in the sense of resisting the system but... I mean, maybe that’s me, but isn’t queer something that intrinsically involves some sort of gender/sexual minority? (Someone please educate me in the comments if my understanding is wrong! Or maybe I missed something? not sure.)

PS2. I would have liked Moore to define how she uses the concept of ‘political economy’ because I have an MA in political economy and I was confused all throughout the book.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full length review here: https://sunnythoughts.binderybooks.co...

[Riley Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really really wanted to like this book. I relate (or thought I related) to a lot of the things Moore writes about, but I’m ultimately left feeling a bit.... I don’t know, frustrated I guess.

There was one essay that I found particularly grating. For all of Moore’s claiming to be “neither stupid or ignorant of political struggles,” I found much of her writing tone deaf, such as when she notes (on the page opposite of the one with the previous quote) that she uses the word “queer” as the general public would fail to recognize, saying that it’s not “the hip synonym for bisexual that indicates I kiss girls at bars to impress boys. I mean queer in the anti-capitalist sense.” Ugh. Moore wishes to speak out against misogyny while describing fellow queer women disparagingly, then notes that she’s never purchase anything “based on a supposed but well-ballyhooed affinity for the LGBTQ community.” This condescension and tone is Moore’s biggest issue. Her topics are interesting but it’s hard to take her seriously when she takes herself so overwhelmingly seriously! (Although I didn’t know at first whether or not she was joking when she said in the same essay that she felt uncomfortable with “crip” because it was “too broad,” despite using “queer” to criticize the LGBTQ community. She wasn’t joking.) Perhaps I’m being too hard on her because I feel that her way of writing is indicative of a larger issue within activist groups (mainly, that those who “know” that they are “right” treat those of us who have yet to be educated as purposefully ignorant), but that doesn’t change my response when reading this. In that same vein: there are plenty of examples of women, those with disabilities, and queer folk experiencing prejudice and injustice. But Moore seems to reach to grab onto new ones people haven’t talked about yet: apparently Amazons Alexa is ableist for responding “I don’t have an opinion on that” to Moore’s question: “Do you acknowledge that people with disabilities exist in the world?” Come ON. Yes, the programmer could have coded more about disabilities, but this is such a blatant trap! It’s bad rhetoric. Frankly, I don’t think it helps people with chronic illnesses.

Some of Moore’s essays on film horror are pretty cool, but nothing phenomenal.

The standout essay of this collection is a tie between the introduction and the last one. Here, Moore abandons most of her rhetoric and just writes. And she’s a good writer! It feels more authentic and less like I’m trying to be fed my own oppression.

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review of this here! https://www.autostraddle.com/body-hor...

[Tessa]

i have mixed feelings about this that i want to acknowledge because i saw a handful of you have it on your lists! i really liked it when i liked it and really didn’t when i didn’t. i think she writes best about american healthcare, illness, and her own experiences—if i was cherry picking, i’d recommend the last three essays. if you read it front to back you will have to grit your teeth through her bizarro explanation of why she identifies as queer (????). i put this collection down for weeks at times when i found her voice tedious and her points not that good. but then again the vagina dentata essay made me laugh out loud on the train. she touches the same ideas frequently—i would have preferred to read one strong essay and gone “interesting!” than repeatedly going “that’s an okay version of the point you’ve already made.” but also i want my uk friends to read it and wonder at how bad american healthcare is LOL

[Stella ☆Paper Wings☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not exactly what I was expecting, but it was fascinating, if a bit strange. I honestly just picked it up on a whim at my local indie bookstore because it seemed fascinating, and the topics were things I had already been thinking about a lot lately. I burned through it in just a few days— very fast, for me reading nonfiction — and even if I had critiques, it was thought-provoking (as you'll see), and that's always worth it.

To be clear, this is a collection of essays, not so much a cohesive book. Somehow I think the marketing made me think it was more of a thesis about the idea of body horror and women in society, but it's more a series of different ideas that all revolve around bodies and politics and horror in some way. While it's definitely an intersectional feminist work, I might classify it more in the realm of disability rights and writing on chronic illness, if anything.

Heads up that if chronic (and sometime terminal) illness is a trigger for you, there might be some tough reads in here. Actually, regardless of who you are, there's gonna be some tough reads. But overall, I think some of Moore's best work in this collection revolves around her experiences with autoimmune disease, and her critiques of the American healthcare system are scathing and spot-on.

I really enjoyed the penultimate essay, A Partial Recounting of My Current Anxieties, which expresses the feeling of anxiety so well, and maybe relieves some of the tension of the rest of the book. On Leaving the Birthplace of Standard Time is a bit of a departure which I'm not sure entirely fits in the collection — and yet I think it was my absolute favorite! A brilliant exploration of capitalism, the west, and the construct of time through the history of Standard Time? Sign me up.

Something Moore seems to do a lot is take two seemingly unrelated topics and try to show how they're connected, and I think this sometimes works very well and sometimes it doesnt. My favorite example of this is definitely Cultural Imperative, where she talks about the obligation on women to give birth and expands it to talk about the role women are seen to have in society. I was skeptical at first about the connection with patents, but I think it came together.

There are other essays, though, where the comparison just doesn't work, or maybe she just doesn't do enough to show that there's a reason we need the comparison at all. In Model Employee, for example, she tries to connect the modeling industry to the garment production industry, I guess just because they're both involved in the process of producing and selling clothes? But if anything the differences between these two might be more worthwhile to highlight. I get the idea that capitalism affects everyone at every level, but I don't see why this particular comparison is important other than that Moore has an interest in Cambodian garment workers (which she brings up kind of a lot).

Some reviewers were annoyed about this one section in The Presence of No Present, where at a certain point we veer off-course to talk about the word "queer." It's definitely a misreading to simplify it as "she says she's queer because she's anticapitalist," and I certainly would not interpret her as a straight person trying to be queer? (Yes, there are reviews saying that when she literally writes that she's attracted to a variety of genders.) But still, I don't think she explained herself very well, and it's a strange moment in an otherwise decent essay about erasure and reclamation.

But even when I didn't fully get the point, I just really enjoyed her writing style, and she has such interesting ideas that sometimes I just liked being along for the ride. This definitely won't work for everybody, but something about it just hit right for me.

If you do consider reading this but you want a sampling, many of the essays are available elsewhere, and potentially on the web. Here are my favorites:

The Shameful Legacy (and Secret Promise) of the Sanitary Napkin Disposal Bag
Women
Consumpcyon
On Leaving the Birthplace of Standard Time
Cultural Imperative
Fucking Cancer
A Partial Recounting of My Current Anxieties
Three Months after Emerging from Your Deathbed

Content Warnings: autoimmune disease, terminal illness, cancer, rape (not graphic), extreme parental abuse (mentioned), suicide (mentioned)

*Note* The version I read is a 2023 reprint of the original with some edits, a new foreword, and some stories replaced/added

[Stephanie McGarrah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is misleading. I rarely dislike a book so much I give it two stars, but there was so much leftist jargon in here, including a sentence where they make sure to include seemingly every "ism" they could think of. Its written by someone (i'm assuming they are some form of socialist) who doesn't seem to particularly like horror, even though they've seen "thousands" of horror films. The critiques of capitalism and misogyny weren't anything new. Also, I'm not sure where the jokes were because it wasn't funny, but maybe that's just my sense of humor.

It wasn't all bad though, I found the sections on autoimmunity to be interesting, even if her conclusions seemed to rest on reforming everything, put more money into research and a plea for more accessibility in daily life. If you're looking for a liberal take on capitalism, Naomi Klein is probably a better choice (at least I don't remember her writing focusing too much on identity politics). There are much better books on all of these subjects.

[Stooce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book played with a lot of interesting ideas. The results were sometimes chaotic and other times underwhelming, but I could see myself returning to some of these essays for future reflection. Some of the writing was poorly edited and just tooo wordy in places, so I found myself rushing through a lot of passages.

[Derodidymus · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting essays. some I liked better than others. horror and illness discussions (interesting).

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this are superb, and parts of this are very random—such is the norm with essay collections, I guess. Anne Elizabeth Moore is a charming audiobook narrator and author, full of a broad range of interests—I enjoyed seeing her brain connect so many different threads. For instance, early on, there’s a surprisingly good essay about how models and clothing factory workers actually have many shared experiences of labor exploitation and precarity. There is also lots of discussion about how misogyny impacts medical research and treatment, particularly when it comes to the long-lying gender bias that impacts autoimmune diseases.

While many people will first think of Body Horror as a collection of insightful cultural criticism, Moore includes many useful insights about living, socializing, and eating while one is disabled. I found myself wanting to know more about every single food factoid Moore shares in this book. I was really moved by the discussion of how CAPITALISM IS LITERALLY MAKING US SICK THROUGH FOOD—like our bodies are rejecting the preservatives and mutations that are being shoved down our throats thanks to globalized food systems. Moore frequently describes the centrality of mass (and unsustainable) production to capitalist society. Some of us, though, cannot or choose not to accept these types of production—because our bodies reject certain mass-produced foods, because we refuse to produce children, or because we do not churn out work products in the desired format. For these groups, Moore notes that our detachment from production means that we cannot access certain societal protections. This is made evident in her heartbreaking accounts of how many relational disappointments she’s experienced during her illnesses.

Another lesson I’ll be keeping from Body Horror connects to How to Tell When We Will Die by Johanna Hedva. Both collections strive to redefine care as something that is not just a one-sided need of disabled people, but something that is both more abundant and less precious. In both books, this is partially done by rejecting the bootstrapping myth, which obscures not just economic support, but also hidden forms of care. As Moore beautifully notes, we often forget “who makes the boots and who waxes the straps.” I will appreciate any and every reminder that nobody truly does anything alone, as it’s an important lesson for my current stage in life. Moore furthers this lesson by interrogating the capitalist notions of innovation: structures like patents hinge on people ignoring communal knowledge or hidden contributions in favor of the single inventor myth.

Overall, I would recommend this. It’s not consistently great, but there are some important threads here—and several that will make you want to research other topics. I would leave a strong trigger warning for sexual violence, and a softer warning for gender essentialism that seems typical of cis white feminists in the late 2010s. That’s not to say it’s excusable, but just to set your expectations.

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited by Anne Elizabeth Moore's Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes. And on one hand, that excitement was warranted. I could tell from the introduction that her ideas were fresh and pulled on issues of biopolitics and bodily control.

And some of the essays (this is an essay collection rather than a cohesive chaptered book, which I hadn't originally realized) were very good, funny and ironic and painful. Her essays on chronic illness and the difficulty of surviving in a world that won't support you ("A Few Things I have Learned About Illness in America.") I liked her skewering of the idea of a sanitary napkin disposal bag, a way to throw away your trash into the trash in a less offensive way. I liked "F*cking Cancer," an essay about the lack of attention and often utter disdain given to autoimmune disorders.

Unfortunately, too many of the essays just lost me. Moore's writing and interjections often left me puzzled as to what she was actually trying to get at. And sometimes, I was a little troubled as to what she might be getting at. Her essay about female complicity in rape culture was very close to reaching some compelling points about how a fear of fear and shame prevents women from coming forward, defending themselves, or standing up for other women. She digs into why films where a woman avenges her own assault are often derided, which was a compelling question to raise. However, she seems to imply that what it really comes down to is women being willing to use violence to defend themselves. Which feels inadequate and misses so many nuances that I thought she was engaging with on purpose.

Many of her essays are ultimately like this: she raises interesting, thought-provoking questions and then seems to sum them up in an astonishingly simplistic way. Even her description of her queerness has reviewers confused, thinking she's claiming queerness purely as a rebellious term. I'm not sure she is, but the point is that we can't tell. Her writing unfortunately leaves things in a bit of a fog, and I ultimately skipped around to read one or two more essays about illness, before abandoning the book.

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

gonna lose a lot of sleep over this one

[Maple · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essays are fairly hit and miss for me. The ones where she draws more upon her personal experience are interesting reads. Others are more of a slog.

I think I would have had an easier time with this book if I hadn't spotted several factual inaccuracies that made me less inclined to trust the author overall.

For example in "fake snake oil" she references a news report in which a man high on 'bath salts' committed cannibalism. But she implies in the statement that he was on bath salts (such as epsom salt) and not bath salts (the colloquial term for a designer drug - which has nothing to do with its chemical makeup).

At another point in the same essay she claims that "Chinese snake oil does have curative properties. It can be used to relieve arthritis pain, improve cognitive function, reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, and alleviate symptoms of depression." She cites a 2007 article in Scientific American as the source for this claim. I found the article (it was not difficult, despite the fact that she did not include a link to this one, unlike at many other points when she included links to sources directly in the text) and it only addresses one of the claims listed (cognitive function) and the study referenced by the article is far from conclusive, despite Moore's confident phrasing.

The heavy use of citations when she is talking about media make it much more blatant when scientific and medical claims are not given the same treatment. Perhaps it is nitpick-y but finding factual inaccuracies that are this blatant really damaged my trust in the author going forward in the book, and I felt unable to take anything she said (that wasn't direct personal experience) without a hefty grain of (bath) salt.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of undeveloped and convoluted round-about thoughts. Though there are some undeniably interesting arguments to be made about the relationship of disability and disease to the exploitation of bodies in capitalism, these essays are so haphazardly argumentative and simultaneously fails to underline the bigger picture and give a structured, coherent analysis. Moore loses her focus by going on tangent after tangent, and most of which meant more to virtue signal than explore her points in depth. The relationship between conceiving children and intellectual property was a strange link to draw, and I couldn't see the argument that would inevitably link the patriarchy and white supremacy simultaneously to that relationship. I just don't think her arguments were as smart as she wanted them to sound. Perhaps I wanted a more structured analysis and got a book of rants that lead nowhere instead.

[Greyson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tw: biphobia

This book was so messy and left me angry by the end. In one essay she not only showed her biphobia and the decided to co-opt the word queer when she's not! : "not queer in the online dating check-box sense - the hip synonym for bisexual that indicates I kiss girls at bars to impress boys. I mean queer in the anti-capitalist." (Page 169)
As someone who is queer, this made me angry.

I also didn't like how she compared how models are treated to garment factory workers. I'm not saying models aren't treated badly but it's not the same.

Her privilege is very apparent in most of her essays; the introduction was the best part. I do think that her essay(s) on Healthcare in America are good and she is disabled herself so some of her thoughts are good and insightful. But overall this collection was a huge letdown and I was left thinking wtf.

[Roma Linares · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will admit that there were many essays that I think made very poignant points, but overall it felt pretty all over the place. I would have liked if it were a bit tighter and felt more organized around a point. To be honest thought, I stopped when Moore began to call herself queer but not in the 'girls kissing each other at college parties' way but in the anti-capitalist way. Excuse me, yes being queer is, in large part, about recognizing and resisting these systems but you do have to be some sort of marginalized gender or sexuality identity to call yourself queer? By that point I just had to put it down.

[Robbie Bruens]

a really truly excellent book that will shift your brain around quite a lot, or at least it did mine -- the essays in here changed how I think about and see myself, taught me a lot about autoimmunity and the exacts horrors inflicted on us by industrial/postindustrial society, its shape, its unintended or totally intended consequences

[Kendall McClain · Rating 3 out of 5]

educational but extremely weird

[caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

nausea inducing (GOOD!)

[Kap · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, Anne Elizabeth Moore explores how capitalism breeds violence against and engenders illness within the bodies of women*.

Moore explores the intersection of capitalism and the body within three realms: work, entertainment, and medicine. Each essay is well-researched and thoughtfully presented, interspersed with Moore’s dark humor. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading her essay, “The Presence of No Present”, in which Moore interrogates her in-home “robot—a “machine that has been designed to live in my house and make my life easier by ordering me things off Amazon Prime”—but winds up with a misheard grocery list instead. Through this amusing encounter, Moore explores how language can help shape and reveal us to ourselves and others, and how “silencing what is not understood only ensures it cannot be considered in the future” (p. 177).

My favorite essays in this collection where those that focused on medicine—in particular, the experience of living with chronic illness. As a woman with multiple autoimmune diseases, Moore attempts to understand the body horror that permeates her own life and the lives of so many others. From how modern food additives may contribute to the rise of autoimmune diseases, to the “superbug apocalypse”, to how farm-to-table restaurants are often inaccessible to those with disabilities. Moore supplements journalistic detail with thoughtful cultural critique. I had a hard time putting down this book.

*Moore does attempt to acknowledge nonbinary people, but she fails to properly acknowledge trans men and women and how capitalist violence and illness marks their lives and bodies. I think Moore could have been more upfront in acknowledging and outlining that her essays mostly focus on a certain group of people (i.e., straight cis women). The first essay in the book, "Massacre on Veng Sreng Street" is the one outlier in this regard as it explores Cambodian culture and politics. Additionally, as others have pointed out, Moore's (short) mention/discussion of queerness comes across as biphobic and dismissive.

[Bryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could never predict where a given essay would take me from the first few pages but I was thrilled to be on the journey! The title really says it all, as non-horror person I was a-okay (and read a few Wikipedia movie synopses to sate my curiosity) and she moves away from horror movie themes in the second half of the book. One of the most interesting and chaotic feminist texts I’ve read in a while, absolutely loved her voice and her creative discussions of illness and capitalism. & obsessed with the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter.

[Ana Hein · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars

A lot of interesting ideas, but the essays always end in unsatisfying places when Moore has just introduced a really interesting and compelling complication to the heart of the essay and then refused to explore it. Also, some of the arguments feel a little disjointed, even when the ones that hit the best hit amazing. All in all, a good study in how to write about illness and disability, but the direct style isn't always my favorite.

[Stephanie Butler · Rating 2 out of 5]

A straight woman who brags about getting cat called on the street because her body’s so hot calling herself queer is next level straight bullshit. I hate this book so much lol. Pretentious, self-obsessed, unlikeable. Disappointing read. Some valid points but mostly just pretentious hyperintellectualization by someone who hasn’t meaningfully engaged with disability studies or queer theory or actual queer people.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

felt like i was reading college essays