My Year of Resting Bitch Face

A new icon for body horrorists and girls who like to carry their books face out while walking down the street so people think we’re interesting has landed: author Ottessa Moshfegh got a modeling contract!

The Midland Agency, an organization best known for sending zombie hotties with a loose interpretation of the concept of walking down the runway, is a perfect fit for Moshfegh. In a 2018 profile with The Cut, Moshfegh explained she got cat-scratch fever and as a result, lost her mind for a minute while working for the late author and editor Jean Stein.

“It was so weird. I don’t remember a lot of it ... Like, I quit via fax,” she said.

The resulting year she spent in bed as a similar zombie was the inspiration for the pillhead pre-9/11 instant classic My Year of Rest and Relaxation. In the same piece, profiler Kaitlin Phillips writes, “Her first book [McGlue] was chosen by a blind jury while she was living in Oakland. Tellingly, she’s refused to let a photo of herself grace any of her book jackets. She’s not going to play any of those games.”

But Ottessa is playing those games, baby (she even appeared, Prada-clad, alongside Daddy author Emma Cline on the cover of September’s Vogue Italia). More authors should be high fashion models. Deborah Eisenberg comes to mind immediately.

In her 2017 book of short stories Homesick for Another World, Moshfegh even shares a health and wellness tip that keeps one’s figure lean and strong. In a story called “Slumming,” a character keeps a food diary for an entire summer where she eats one footlong sub sandwich per day.

Writing is hard. This seems lucrative. I hope she gets a gummy hair vitamin influencer deal next.