Body Horror Read online

  PRAISE FOR BODY HORROR

  “Books We’re Excited About in 2017” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE)

  “Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017” (CHICAGO READER)

  “Books to Help You Survive the First 6 Months of Trump” (CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS)

  “Probing her own experiences with disease and health care, Anne Elizabeth Moore offers scalpel-sharp insight into the ways women’s bodies are subject to unspeakable horrors under capitalism.”

  —CHICAGO TRIBUNE

  “Sharp, shocking, and darkly funny, the essays in [Body Horror] . . . expose the twisted logic at the core of Western capitalism and our stunted understanding of both its violence and the illnesses it breeds. . . . Brainy and historically informed, this collection is less a rallying cry or a bitter diatribe than a series of irreverent and ruthlessly accurate jabs at a culture that is slowly devouring us.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

  “Scary as fuck, and liberating.”

  —VIVA LA FEMINISTA

  “Anne Elizabeth Moore is the feminist killjoy I want at every party—armed and ready to calmly, often humorously, eviscerate any casual misogyny in the room. Compiling her years of experience as a journalist, this collection showcases Moore’s staggering body of knowledge. At the core of several of these essays is Moore’s own body and its betrayals in the form of autoimmune disorders and her newly accepted label of disability. Admirably, Moore never lingers too long on her own experience, but instead uses it to reach to different corners of the globe and different eras in American history to diagnose the malignancy of misogyny on bodies beyond her own. Perhaps because of Moore’s multiple analyses of various horror films, Body Horror seems to remind readers of the iconic line, ‘The call is coming from inside the house.’ Anne Elizabeth Moore is masterful at illustrating how the ills of capitalism have become so insidious that they are now coming from inside—our houses, our heads, our very cells.”

  —SARAH HOLLENBECK, Women & Children First Bookstore

  “As the subtitle promises, this essay collection by award-winning journalist and Fulbright scholar Anne Elizabeth Moore tackles heavy, complicated issues with biting humor and aplomb, dissecting the ways patriarchal capitalistic trauma plays out on women’s bodies and health, both mental and physical. From her keen observations on the 2014/2015 Cambodian garment workers’ mass strike and its resulting massacre to her vulnerable, often hilarious insights on the maze of current American healthcare and her own varied ailments, Moore writes with spark and verve.”

  —LYDIA MELBY, Texas Book Festival

  “At turns chummy, cerebral, and incendiary, Body Horror holds no punches. This motley crew of essays form an astute and uproarious exploration of the insidious misogyny and ableism bred into contemporary culture. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you might even rage-vomit. A winner.”

  —KATHARINE SOLHEIM, Unabridged Bookstore

  PRAISE FOR THREADBARE

  “Threadbare takes us down the rabbit hole of the global fashion and textile industry, connecting the dots between the lives of the women who work at Forever 21 and the women who sew the clothes that hang on the racks there. With vivid storytelling and deep investigation, Anne Elizabeth Moore and her team of talented cartoonists prove the strength of comics as tool for translating impossible complexity to our everyday experience.”

  —JESSICA ABEL, author of Out on the Wire and Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

  “A fascinating look into the lives behind our clothes. From the people who make them, to the people who model them, to the people who sell them, our clothes are part of an intricate network which spans the globe. The art in Threadbare helps draw a personal connection to what might otherwise be overwhelming statistics, and gives an intimate look into the way the world is affected by what we buy.”

  —SARAH GLIDDEN, author of Rolling Blackouts and How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

  “A compelling and comprehensive portrait of the human cost behind what we wear. The sharp, gorgeous, and distressing Threadbare will leave you questioning both your wardrobe and the state of the world as a whole.”

  —TIM HANLEY, author of Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet’s Ace Reporter and Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine

  “Well-researched, engaging, and full of surprising (and sometimes horrifying) statistics, you may finish reading this book and decide to become an activist—no longer shopping for clothes at your local mall and pressuring your elected officials for legislation that holds clothing manufacturers and retailers responsible.”

  —LISA WILDE, author of Yo, Miss: A Graphic Look at High School

  “Threadbare is a brilliant amalgam of art, storytelling, consciousness-building, and old-fashioned muckraking. It takes on the enormous project of confronting the international apparel trade, through delving into individual stories and lifting up voices that are usually suppressed or ignored in mass media. The Ladydrawers collective and Anne Elizabeth Moore bring us face to face, literally, with the people most affected by labor exploitation and abuse—and in seeing their faces, we understand the realities beyond the facts. An intrepid journey!”

  —MAYA SCHENWAR, editor-in-chief of Truthout, author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better

  PRAISE FOR ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE

  A “post-Empirical, proto-fourth-wave-feminist memoir-cum-academic abstract [that] makes our country’s Mommy Wars look like child’s play—and proves . . . why we should be paying attention to Cambodia’s record of human rights and gender equity.”

  —BUST MAGAZINE (on New Girl Law)

  “Attains the modest yet important success of making personal narratives and experience matter to critiques of history and globalization.”

  —HYPHEN MAGAZINE (on Cambodian Grrrl)

  “A passionate, engaging, heartbreaking, funny, and inspiring book. I want to slip it into every tourist guide to Asia and give a copy to every girl in the world.”

  —JEAN KILBOURNE, author, filmmaker, and cultural critic (on Cambodian Grrrl)

  “Anne Elizabeth Moore lets readers peer over her shoulder as she attempts the implausible. It turns out, the implausible is hard, and funny, and tragic, and illuminating, but once you sign up for the journey she never lets you look away. After reading what this woman accomplished in a few months, you might ask yourself some hard questions about how you spent last summer . . .”

  —GLYNN WASHINGTON, NPR’s Snap Judgment (on Cambodian Grrrl)

  “Cambodian Grrrl offers a compelling and spirited model of what is possible when media-making becomes a community endeavor. Don’t understand why media is a human rights issue? You will by the end of Anne Elizabeth Moore’s latest effort.”

  —JENNIFER POZNER, Executive Director, Women In Media & News

  “1000000000000000% punk rock.”

  —JACKSONVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY (on Cambodian Grrrl)

  “Conversational, intellectually curious, and charmingly ragged, Unmarketable is an anti-corporate manifesto with a difference: It exudes raw coolness.”

  —MOTHER JONES (on Unmarketable)

  “[Offers] something distinctly more radical than merely protesting against consumerism: a total rejection of the competitive ethos that drives capitalist culture.”

  —LA TIMES (on Unmarketable)

  “This is a work of honesty and, yes, integrity.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS (on Unmarketable)

  “Sharp and valuable muckraking.”

  —TIME OUT NEW YORK (on Unmarketable)

  CURBSIDE SPLENDOR

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, inc
luding information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.

  Published by Curbside Splendor Publishing, Inc., Chicago, Illinois in 2017.

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2017 by Anne Elizabeth Moore

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936598

  ISBN 978-1-940430-93-5

  Edited by Irma Nuñez and Naomi Huffman

  Cover and interior art by Xander Marro

  Author photo by Elizabeth Mason

  Book design by Alban Fischer

  www.curbsidesplendor.com

  CONTENTS

  Body horror, an introduction

  Massacre on Veng Sreng Street

  The shameful legacy (and secret promise) of the sanitary napkin disposal bag

  Women

  A few things I have learned about illness in America

  Model employee

  Vagina dentata

  Consumpcyon

  Cultural imperative

  On leaving the birthplace of standard time

  Superbugs are coming for you!

  Fake snake oil

  The presence of no present

  Fucking cancer

  The metaphysics of compost

  Three months after emerging from your deathbed

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  BODY HORROR, AN INTRODUCTION

  One of the great paradoxes of writing a book is that the introduction is often the last section set to paper, for as easy as it may have been to write what appears on the pages that follow, it is far more difficult for an author to explain why they felt compelled to write it. Yet as I sit down at my laptop this morning, the Republican-backed Congress has pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, by a vote of fifty-one to forty-eight, with no replacement plan yet on offer.

  This would be the number one priority of women’s rights groups in the US, were they not distracted by a very narrow definition of “women’s health,” as first on the GOP chopping block is coverage for pre-existing conditions. These include the entirety of autoimmune disease as well as most other chronic illnesses—often only uncurable because understudied, and understudied because largely found in the bodies of women. Autoimmune diseases, in which the body’s immune system turns on itself, resulting in pain, debility, or worse—I have several—are no different, afflicting a population that is between 80 and 95 percent female, depending on diagnosis. Nearly fifty million US residents are estimated to have such disorders; should the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare, be repealed, the diagnosed are unlikely to be eligible for private health insurance coverage under whatever program replaces current healthcare policy, assuming one does.

  The ACA also provided the funding package for expanded Medicaid, and in certain states like Michigan—where I now live—this single economic move has allowed an entire industry to thrive in the desperate economy of Detroit. My entire not-for-profit health network primarily treats folks covered by expanded Medicaid. They have jobs, we have healthcare. The ACA is far from ideal, certainly, but I do not know a soul who has not benefited from it. An immediate repeal, or even a Medicaid restructure, is likely to shutter this massive health facility in a high-needs part of the country, whereupon even my neighbors eligible for and able to afford private insurance will find it that much more challenging to locate a provider. Thousands will be out of work in this state alone. Millions of the autoimmune across the nation—mostly women—will see access to lab tests, health professionals, and life-saving medicines at affordable prices stripped away overnight. Pain will increase for us, first weekly, then daily. Movement will become labored, then difficult, then cease. Many will be unable to get to places of work, or even dress. Livers will be poisoned, breathing will become difficult, blood pressures will elevate, kidneys will fail. A pervading sense of hopelessness will gain traction. Suicide tallies will rise, I guarantee it. And death rates, from a debilitating class of diseases that can be controlled with careful maintenance and testing, and a very minimum of medical oversight, will quickly stupefy.

  I wrote this book in case you hadn’t figured out yet that what we are facing at this moment is institutionalized misogyny at the service of capitalism. I wrote this book to describe to you how terrifying this truly is. I wrote this book in case it is the last thing I do.

  BODY HORROR

  Body horror, the goriest of the horror media subgenres, is to my mind the only mode of cultural production capable of capturing this political moment. Also called biological or organic horror, the subgenre is marked by a distinct visuality, which makes it particularly popular for exploration in film. Body horror literature exists, of course: Mary Percy Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Charles Burns’ Black Hole are personal favorites, and hybrid forms like videogames (images from the first-person shooter Silent Hill haunt me, years on) and serial television (The Walking Dead) fill out the range of ways we can follow along as the known turns into the unknown, the normal becomes disfigured, the comforting emerges as truly terrifying.

  Yet the above-named titles are all works of fiction, perhaps inspired by true events or political doings or lived experience, but not in any way beholden to facts. What I am interested in laying out for you in this book is the experience of body horror, as a close observer and quasi-survivor—a real-life Final Girl, scruffed and seeping blood from the nose. There are quite a few of us, Final Girls all: survivors of physical and emotional toils so acute they have changed us. In work, entertainment, and medicine—three pillars of global capitalism—women stand witness, too often muted, as their own bodies bleed, mutate, or break down under the simple effort it takes to get through another day.

  Contained within this collection are previously published reports and essays on this phenomenon, as well as several all-new works. They are organized (loosely) beginning with the objectively reported and ending in the deep interior monologue I rarely share with anyone. They were written in a dizzying range of circumstances and locales during a time period in which I traveled two hundred days per year, and the period immediately following it, when I could not leave my block, or sometimes even my bed, for several months. (The first essay deserves note in this regard; “Massacre on Veng Sreng Street” shares my experiences covering the largest garment worker uprising in the history of Cambodia, and the government-fueled violence that ended it. It was somewhere between those happy marches and the chilling walks under machine gun sights endured in the nation thereafter that I first noticed something had shifted in my body.) Each essay, however, is rooted in the experience of misogyny, whether mine or others’, and the heightening tension that arises from the degeneration, mutilation, or destruction of that (feminine) body.

  Of course labeling the horrific makes it less so. I learned this from family friends on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota where I was born, and saw it confirmed later among the survivors of mass killing in Cambodia and those who witnessed the 2008 civil war in the Republic of Georgia. When horror is made banal, a vocabulary for comedy develops. If you don’t believe me, just ask the RNs down at your local hematology/oncology clinic for the latest in knee-slappers. Popular psychology will tell us that humor intends to distract and deflect, but jokes also establish a zone of shared experience.

  I hope, I mean to convey, that despite my clear and deliberate attempts in these pages to disgust and frighten you, that you still find pleasure and comfort in this book.

  WORK I

  There was a period not too long ago when I was wracked with pain and could barely type, but this book was late. My slow progress toward completion was due to a recent appointment with a new specialist, a visit long delayed by the cancellation of my health insurance in August under the vindictive eye of a caseworker at the Department of Health and Human Services in the State of Michigan. I spent a month resubmitting the exact same materials I had sent along three months earlier, and finally, my insuranc
e was reinstated in September. But the ailments had racked up in four short weeks, and my new doctor was overwhelmed. Without proper medication, I had lost mobility in both hands. Without access to lab tests, it was unclear if my liver was functioning properly. My blood pressure had skyrocketed, putting me at immediate risk of heart attack, the side effect of a steroid I should have stopped taking, but could not without medical guidance. The specialist’s task at that moment was to undo the damage inflicted on my body by the state. My task was to continue operating as if I would survive: eat food, cleanse myself, uphold promises, meet deadlines.

  Put otherwise, I was to complete a book cataloging physical debility despite my own increasing physical debility. I have only ever promised readers I would try not to flinch, is what I said to calm myself down. I have made no promises not to flinch. Yet such projects always raise the question of how much awfulness one should really share, a situation in which writers tend to exercise caution. The novelist Alphonse Daudet wrote poignantly of hiding his suffering from loved ones in order to conserve his relationships during the years he spent in tabes dorsalis—a late stage of syphilis in which the nerves of the spine begin rotting away. Published under the title In the Land of Pain and edited and translated from French by Julian Barnes, Daudet included his readers among his beloved.

  “I don’t want my next book to be too harsh,” he wrote. “Last time I felt I went too far. Poor humanity—you shouldn’t tell it everything. I shouldn’t inflict on people what I’ve endured . . . people should be treated as if they were sick. . . . Let’s make them love the doctor, rather than play the tough and brutal butcher.”

  I adore my readers and wish to guard them from suffering, too, but I couldn’t sign off on the collection of essays you’re about to read if I agreed that writers have a responsibility to readers to quell harsh descriptions of lived experience. Nor if I found Daudet’s writing on pain—often couched in lovely metaphors—to be sufficient on the subject. In recent years, I have adopted a similar approach to humanity, presuming that they, too, are experiencing some form of impairment or suffering, but rather than warranting protection, I suspect that readers desire to see their experiences reflected in the world. (I further quibble with the amount of trust Daudet places in doctors, although I see where it comes from—his, at least, offered morphine, whereas mine have twice now significantly worsened my condition or brought on entirely new diagnoses.) Unlike dear Alphonse, I have found that more folks experiencing physical or emotional pain see it alleviated through literature than through medical advice. (Hat tip to Susan Sontag’s foundational thoughts on illness narratives, which I discuss directly in the essay “Fucking cancer.”)