My Body, My Horror: Body Positivity in the Horror Genre
My Body, My Horror: Dread's Chad Collins talks body positivity in the horror genre!
By
Chad Collins
Robert Hoge’s 2013 autobiography “Ugly” shares some harsh but staggeringly true words– not everyone is pretty, and unfortunately, some people are ugly. Hoge himself was born with deformed legs and a giant tumor between his eyes, and in the opening chapters of “Ugly,” he recounts how his mother’s shock over his appearance left her uncertain over whether to bring him home or not. It’s a poignant and heartrending account of otherness rooted in physicality, of a look so ostensibly “monstrous” one’s own mother conjectures that a child might not simply be worth loving. Hoge, now a motivational speaker and writer, contends that not everyone can be pretty. We can teach ourselves and our children and our children’s children to accept and love everyone everywhere– to treat them with respect– but the immutable fact remains that there will always be standards, always cultural impositions on what it means to be pretty and what it means to be ugly.