There is something fascinating about monsters. Maybe it’s because of their diversity. Perfect bodies of women and men are very much alike, whereas each monster has its own shape and is different from all others. Like Umberto Eco said, “[b]eauty is frequently boring, everybody knows what beauty is”. Therefore, he thought ugliness was much more interesting and fun. In a lecture about ugliness, he said: “It is a general phenomenon of our nature that sad, terrible, even horrific things are irresistibly attractive to us”. As it is scenes of suffering, as long as it doesn’t affect us directly.

In the Merriam Webster Thesaurus, monster is the same as demon, grotesque, ogre, Frankenstein, devil, terror, bogeyman, horror, mutant, abomination, abnormality, freak, weirdo, villain, brute, beast, savage, devil, criminal, offender, bandit, rogue, assassin, thug, gangster. Basically, everything that is considered bad in society. On the contrary, beautiful is everything that is considered good, like lovely, gorgeous, cute, charming, elegant, delightful, glorious, magnificent, perfect, fascinating, wonderful, excellent. According to the Catholic Church, monsters are part of Hell while good people go to Heaven. However, many people might say they would prefer Hell to Heaven as Heaven is a place where nothing happens and no one does anything. Apparently, suffering all kinds of horrors for all eternity is not scary enough…

The enemy is always ugly, monstrous, able only to commit atrocities while “our side” is composed exclusively of moral, just, and beautiful fighters. In literature, the good guys are also described with the best adjectives and their opponents, the villains, are described as ugly and deformed. Yet, monsters can be beautiful and nice, like the monster in the story of “Beauty and the Beast”. The “Beast” is a monster until he complies with the norm, which is explained to him by the “Beauty”. We might analyse this as men being beasts until they meet a beautiful woman who falls in love with them and transforms them into good people. Reality shows us every day that the story is not always like that. In fact, some men become beasts after they marry (hence, domestic violence). So, the idea that a woman can change a man through love is embedded in fairy tales. More recently, we have “Shrek” (although, in this story, the beautiful princess becomes an ogre, but essentially the story stands).

However, women that are monsters are beyond rehabilitation. For example, mermaids are beautiful women that live in the sea and have these wonderful singing voices, which they use to lure men (sailors, more precisely). These men are seduced and persuaded to follow the mermaids to the bottom of the sea, where they drown. Yes, modern stories have tried to give a better and romanticised picture of mermaids as miserable creatures, prisoners of some evil character. These mermaids are good and refuse to go along with evil. Then, a good man falls in love with her and saves her. The difference here is that women who are saved are not monsters, but victims of monsters. Besides being physically appealing, beautiful women are those who don’t fuss about anything, are patient no matter what happens, don’t look to other men (let alone have the desire to be with someone who is not her husband), don’t raise their voice, are self-confident, and lovely. Yet, beautiful women who are powerful are pictured as mean, bossy, lonely, frustrated, and someone to avoid at all costs; hence, monsters.

As Umberto Eco mentioned in his lecture, centuries ago women were seen as using makeup to conceal their imperfections. Yet, beautiful women (especially those who take care of their image) can also be seen as immoral, as little monsters who seduce men for evil purposes (like the mermaids). The balance is difficult: men want women to be beautiful and perfect, but women are expected to let men do whatever they want with them without women complaining. If they complain or, even worse, if they are the ones who take the initiative of seduction, they are monsters. There is a pattern of power playing in these stories, one where men always have the upper hand. By the way, have you noticed that witches are depraved young women or very ugly old women? Male wizards are old wise men who are pillars of society while witches should be kept away from men’s eyes (because who knows what can happen to men if men see them…).

Then, there are the monsters who are defective. Sometimes they are linked to people with disabilities, who were seen as monsters by society. In the old days, disabled people were locked up in dark places or were simply killed. They were considered as “damage goods”, which was how soldiers coming from war without a leg or an arm would also feel. These were people who were not perfect (thus, not beautiful), hence monsters.

In a nutshell, monsters are all those creatures or human beings who don’t comply with society’s norms for some reason, and should be cast out from society.