Masks of Beauty: Scent, Stench, and Scars in Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer

Beauty is a phenomenal concept and feature in human society, it has power to build, destroy and devastate that which is built as portrayed in Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer. Extant scholarly views on the text have focused predominantly on patriarchy and feminism, with little or no consideration for the scent, stench and scar of beauty which is the crux of this paper. This paper, therefore, examines how men are enchanted with beauty, the destruction men are prone to and the indelible scars that emanated from an inordinate quest for physical beauty of a woman. Our research instrument shall be the library. The primary text which will serve as the data for this study is Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, it will be subjected to critical textual analysis. Inspiration will be drawn from Aristotle’s Model of Relational Theory of Beauty as theoretical framework; it will also undergird the analysis. It is significantly discovered that physical beauty has ensnared and destroyed men of high substance. It is also discovered that beauty is employed as camouflage for nefariousness. It concludes that beauty is a mask for people who use it as a cover for their real personalities.