There will be likes. There will be follows. There will be blood.
Synopsis
Vixen would sell her soul to get into the Bleach Babes and, if she isn’t careful, she might just get what she wants.
One of the most exclusive influencer co-ops in LA, the Bleach Babes live and work together in one big house where they have it all: popularity, talent, and beauty. Their leader? Supermodel Margo, a woman as sinister as she is sexy.
After Margo agrees to take Vix under her wing—and into her bed—Vixen moves in and begins hustling. Success comes hard and fast, but the glitz and glamor comes with a price that may cost her her sanity… and her life.
Review
Mewing begins intriguingly. A short description precedes the opening chapter, explaining the process the book is named after: the tongue technique used by models to make their jawline look slimmer. It’s a hint at what’s to come: ideas of control, sacrifice and doing (arguably) unnecessary stuff to your bodies, and it immediately unsettles you.
From that point on, you are never settled again. This is The Devil Wears Prada for the Insta Model generation fused with a tale of toxic romance, dark magic and stomach-churning body horror.
Vixen is the model wanting more; unlike the fashion-clueless Prada ingénue, however, she is already pretty savvy: a decent amount of followers for her modelling, getting free clothes from companies, etc, but money is tight and she seeks out the next level of fashion fame: The Bleach Babes, a group of influencers (a gamer, an actress, a fitness star, etc) who all live in the same house, their careers (and diets) overseen with ruthless efficiency by the matriarchal powerhouse figure of famous supermodel Margo.
Margo is a terrific creation. Spencer could have made her a pantomime villain: she controls everyone’s diet regime, she forces Vixen to bleach her own auburn hair blonde (well, I mean they are called the Bleach Babes to be fair). But Spencer offsets such controlling behaviour with Margo’s monologues on how they are freeing themselves from the control of men as well as the occasional body positive comment (cellulite: fine), so at first the reader is thrown off balance, never sure what to make of her. Vixen herself is not exactly a heroine either; she self-describes as a snake and so you are, at least initially, never sure if her infatuation with Margo is her own doing or the abuse of her mentor.
As well as this relationship of obsession we have a deeply unsettling tale of body modification and something ancient and scary in the background. The genius of the early scenes is that we are never really sure what is supernatural and what is simply the disturbing reality of such a living situation – is that model throwing up in the bathroom in the grip of something sinister or are they simply bulimic? This could have just been a tale of our real world without the insidious horror and it still would have been creepy.
But eventually, Spencer chooses the surreal, over-the-top route – nods to the Suspiria-style Giallo horror of Dario Argento abound – and the reader is thrown into the kind of body horror that will make you wish you didn’t have to feel a particular part of your body for days afterwards.
There are also some great themes to chew over (that lame pun gets slightly funnier once you’ve read it): are the Bleach Babes taking their destiny from the old patrichal fashion model system, or simply enslaving themselves in a different way? Is the relationship between Vixen and Margo “simply” (not that there’s anything simple about it) a tale of toxicity and abuse, or is it a metaphor for the relationship between the Zoomer model generation and the social media society they’re dependent on? There’s no easy answers here, and the novella is all the better for it.
The secret weapon behind all these tasty themes and screams is Spencer’s prose, which is just excellent; clinical and precise when it needs to be and terrifyingly effective in its over-the-top descriptions when it wants to; just as confident in narrating the complex power-plays and conversational layers of abuse as it is taking you through step by step the most nauseating body horror. This story would have been great still with lesser prose, but Spencer is a great wordsmith and it shows.
Shortwave impressed last year with a series of well-written bite-sized horrors, and by kicking off the year with this it’s showing it has no plans to let up with the quality. Mewing is read-in-one-sitting addictive, and will make you think twice about ever using a very common form of office stationary. This compelling modern-day fable will linger long after the mirror lights go out. You’ll want to look away. You won’t.
Leave a Reply