Warning: This article contains spoilers for American Horror Stories season 3, episode 3!
The third season of American Horror Stories introduces its first body horror episode with “Tapeworm.” Unlike the characters in “Bestie” or “Daphne” who focused on tech-related terror, this David Cronenberg-esque episode of American Horror Stories season 3 examines the modern-day drive to be the best through the eyes of aspiring model Vivian Lee Finch (Laura Kariuki), whose hunger for success takes her to New York City in the hope of landing on the cover of Vogue magazine. When she visits the notoriously picky Sheila Klein’s modeling agency looking for representation, she’s dismissed as overweight at a size 4, and becomes desperate to lose pounds so she can get signed.
Her new friend Heather tells her about a doctor who can give her a miracle drug for weight loss, but it causes complications with her heart, so he suggests a nonconventional approach – a tapeworm. Vivian willingly ingests the larvae and as the organism grows inside her, she sheds pounds and appears in glamorous magazines, but the tapeworm’s appetite is insatiable. Fearing for her life, she takes a substance that will force it out of her body, but because she let it grow too large it kills her in the process. Heather discovers the gruesome scene and becomes the tapeworm’s next victim, later appearing at Sheila Klein’s office looking visibly thinner.
The Tapeworm’s Final Victim & Heather’s Doom Explained
At one point Vivian tries to explain the tapeworm’s hunger to Heather, but she gets rebuffed and told that the “tapeworm” is simply her jealousy and massively inflated ego running rampant. This denial sets Heather up to be ignorant of the tapeworm’s real danger when she enters their shared apartment and discovers Vivian’s body in the bathtub. The tapeworm can be seen dangling behind Heather’s head, and in the following scene, she’s seen sprawled on the floor of the hallway with the tapeworm’s body coiled around her neck and its head lunging into her mouth.
Unfortunately, Heather didn’t have the same Faustian choice that Vivian did when it came to ingesting the tapeworm, and therefore has even less of a chance of controlling it. Whereas at least the doctor warned Vivian about overfeeding the tapeworm, Heather had no such explanation and would therefore be in even greater peril. She did tell Vivian that every aspiring model, including herself, has the same drive to succeed they just “hide it better,” so in a way Heather is getting her comeuppance after all.
Vivian’s Death & Tapeworm Reveal Explained
Despite her doctor’s strict instructions, Vivian doesn’t adhere to a normal eating schedule and instead allows the tapeworm to dictate the size of her meals. Not only does she eat outside of meal time, but she eats whenever she’s not working, and soon begins devouring the food at the craft service table to the shock of the surrounding models. Vivian has a choice; either remove the worm herself, or she’ll not only lose work, she’ll lose her life. Unfortunately, it’s much larger than either the doctor or Vivian could have predicted, and when she uses a toxin to drive it out of her lower orifice, it’s strong enough to fight back.
While real tapeworms don’t have the sort of mouth that the one in American Horror Stories does, the needle-like teeth and expanding jaws make for a truly terrifying creature. Even after Vivian grabs its head and pulls its body out of her (at this point several feet long), it behaves like a snake and is able to maul her to death. When Heather finds her, blood is splattered on the wall next to the bathtub, and it’s clear that not only did it viciously attack her, it might have fed on her flesh as well.
Why Vivian Accepted The Tapeworm & Couldn’t Stop Feeding It
Vivian was so desperate to prove to herself that she could overcome the limitations of her medical condition and become a model that she accepted the tapeworm without considering the ramifications. Her need for validation was so strong that she never asked about the consequences of having the tapeworm inside of her long term and didn’t try to curb the tapeworm’s hunger even when it turned her into a monstrous person because it led to booking fabulous editorials. She only considered the dangerous side effects to her career when she lost so much weight that designers got fed up with having to constantly make time-consuming alterations after fittings.
The tapeworm came to embody Vivian’s internal hunger for success hidden behind a starry-eyed veneer. When the episode began, Vivian was smiling, happy, and eager, and by the end of the episode she was sullen, angry, and bitter, a metamorphosis both symbolic of her time spent in the modeling industry and the effects of the tapeworm taking over her body. Vivian couldn’t stop feeding the tapeworm because she thought she would lose her foothold as a supermodel, when she should have been worried about losing the aspects of herself that made her a good person like being honest, helpful, and willing to stand by her friends.
The Real Meaning Of The Tapeworm In American Horror Stories
This episode of American Horror Stories really drives home the concept that the fashion industry is cutthroat and cultivates a toxic culture of getting ahead by any means necessary. Even though Vivian and Heather start off as friends who vow to help each other get to the top, once the tapeworm is introduced, Vivian changes into an ambitious and self-centered narcissist. She originally set out to become a supermodel despite having scoliosis, but after a while, she only reinforces the poor behavior that makes the fashion industry so dangerous for impressionable young people, and even good-hearted Heather isn’t immune to the perspective.
As the doctor points out to Vivian after the first signs that the tapeworm has gotten out of control, the organism’s defense mechanism becomes her defense mechanism. While it eats to live and starves her of the nutrients she needs to survive, she takes every job for herself, insulting other models around her, and referring to Heather as a washed-up has-been. Instead of being the best version of herself, she chose to be better than everyone around her, sacrificing her altruism and good intentions for fame, success, and notoriety for an industry that devoured her in one of the best episodes of American Horror Stories yet.
