Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Amy Annette’s third Fringe show is about beauty standards, and – surprise! – how she thinks they’re toxic.

She throws a lot of facts and personal stories at the premise – plus a few unconnected ideas – but the result is overstuffed, while struggling to get beyond things a switched-on audience surely already know.

She races through how aesthetic ideals have changed down the centuries – such as the fact that ‘plump’ has traditionally been seen as attractive in times of scarcity – the dangers of social media comparisons, and how modern beauty treatments such as salmon sperm facials are frankly bizarre. But in this, she’s often more factual than funny.

Her premise is that ‘hotness’ has now become so widely accessible - with Botox jabs available in your lunch hour – that it’s triggered a hyperinflation in good looks that it’s hard to keep up with. Even comedians these days are attractive, she complains, while stressing stories that show herself in a less flattering light – about body hair or being sweaty, for example.

Her honesty and high-spirited friendliness get the audience on board, though she overuses the technique of using a sarcastic sing-songy voice at the end of sentences containing pertinent facts. A comic flourish, yes, but the affectation both lessens the impact of any serious points and highlights the fact there’s not actually a real joke there.

Hypocrisies are exposed – why are boobs good but other body fat bad? – and we even get a mini art-history lesson on virginity indicators on portraits of Elizabeth I.

A B plot has her considering how weird it is when celebrities are found to be doing unusual things. That RuPaul was involved in fracking came as a genuine surprise, but surely everyone knows that Katy Perry’s been to the edge of space, and again Annette didn’t parlay a reference into a joke. 

Events intervened this week, with the comic having to deliver a prepared routine about Dolly Parton’s involvement in the Moderna Covid vaccine the day after the singer’s death - but it was always going to be a positive section. Singing ‘vaccine’ to the tune of Jolene, as the woman herself did five years ago, doesn’t add much – but Annette’s got a great singing voice worth showing off.

It’s part of her general jolliness that buoys things along, but can’t totally compensate for the fact that the content is something of a jumble, needing more clarity and more space for ideas to develop beyond the obvious. Ironically, a show about beauty standards proves to be only skin deep.

Review date: 30 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Dome