Rouge: A Novel

While Seth targets Mira as a child specifically, his actions and Rouge’s mission are a metaphor for the negative effects of the beauty industry more broadly. While not mystical, Seth has his counterpart in Marva, an influencer whom Mira reveres and follows dogmatically. Marva’s presence throughout the novel highlights how Mira’s induction into the world of beauty has persisted into adulthood, with a new set of impossible standards to adhere to. This is satirized through Marva’s interminable skincare journeys, which all seem to cause or contradict each other—using retinol on an anti-aging journey, for example, irritates the skin and sparks an anti-inflammatory journey. Mira trusts Marva, and the novel immediately establishes the high costs of attaining beauty through her faith. While she forgets to pack a dress for her mother’s funeral, she packs seven bags of skincare products, hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of products. Likewise, Noelle has gone into debt to pay for Rouge’s treatments. These costs extend to psychological tolls—later, Mira reflects that “mental reshuffling” is a “small price to pay for this level of collagen regeneration” (201). This statement suggests that cognitive function is a reasonable sacrifice for beautiful skin. Similarly, Mira’s obsession with acids suggests the pain involved in beauty is a reasonable cost.

Awad also highlights the insidious and omnipresent nature of the beauty industry via social media and technology. Even before she encounters Rouge, Mira is obsessed with watching skincare videos on social media, to the detriment of her other priorities. When she sees the initial ad for Rouge—in which Awad mimics typical beauty industry marketing language—the scene becomes uncanny: “‘Where does the secret lie?’ It’s the woman in red talking again. A voice-over that sounds not like it’s coming from my phone’s speaker, but whispering right in my ear” (30). While Mira first encounters Rouge through technology, the auditory imagery here blends the ad with reality, leaving them indistinguishable. As such, this scene bridges the gap between beauty industry messaging and the horrors of Rouge represented throughout the novel. This reflects the negative aspects of beauty messaging becoming exponentially more prevalent in daily life.

The novel also critiques the beauty industry’s preference for whiteness and the way it upholds systemic racism. Awad moves from realistic representations of racism to supernatural instances of horrifying racism as Mira moves deeper into the world of Rouge. Racism is present in early interactions with Noelle and Mira’s childhood friends, who characterize her as “other” or “exotic” due to her Egyptian heritage. One of the effects of Rouge’s treatments is whitening: Mira observes that a woman who has just had a treatment is “[p]aler than last time. As if the color had been leached out of her skin a little. She had a whiteness. A Brightness, call it a Brightness” (201). Awad thus highlights an assumption that paleness is associated with beauty. The fact that characters who work at Rouge repeatedly tell customers to call this effect “brightness” rather than “whiteness” suggests that they are aware of and use euphemisms to disguise their inherent racism.

The beauty nature’s exploitative nature is clearest in the novel’s climax after Mira’s third treatment. While ostensibly perfected, she and the other women have no memories, and even their beauty seems to be a ruse or a magic glamour—Lake’s face becomes more shadowy as Mira looks at her, and she secretly thinks she looks dead. This reflects how the beauty industry’s promises are false or, in some cases, harmful, and it culminates in the scene when Lake’s jellyfish is eaten alive by Rouge’s diners. In the gory scene, it becomes clear that Rouge steals souls and devours them to benefit a select few, a metaphor for the way the beauty industry exploits people to generate profits. Awad asserts that there is no winning within the system, and the only way to escape this cycle is through solidarity and resistance. Noelle and the other jellyfish help Mira swim to freedom, breaking the spell and drowning the evil-doers. Similarly, Sylvia helps Mira recover and rebuild her life, and the novel ends with Mira leading an addled Hud back to shore. The dark fairy tale ends with a glimmer of hope as its characters move into a future without Rouge.