"The Substance" A Social Commentary on Anti-Aging and Beauty Standards
Fury Basso-Davis | November 20, 2024
Inescapable beauty standards control women around the world. Where do they come from? When do women stop being “beautiful?” According to Harvey from “The Substance,” they lose their beauty when they turn 50.
“The Substance,” a 2024 film directed by Coralie Fargeat, follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), known for her popular aerobics show. On her 50 birthday, she receives devastating news of her termination from her job. During this distressing time, she is approached by a lab that promises to transform her into an enhanced version of herself named Sue (Margaret Qualley). However, splitting between her original and new body takes a turn for the worse and has drastic consequences. Sue begins to unravel Elisabeth's life in a disturbing spiral of body horror.
“The Substance” focuses on staying young and keeping up with beauty standards. It begs the question “How far will Sparkle go to maintain her youthful appearance?” The answer: very far. “The Substance” opens with a shot of an egg yolk being injected with a neon green substance, which then morphs into two. The second scene is Sparkle’s star getting placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It shows how excited people were to see her name on a star and talk about how amazing her show is. Then, the seasons start to change and the years go by, and slowly everyone forgets who she is and what her performance was. At the end of the scene, her star had aged and cracked.
The film’s audience’s first introduction to Sparkle was while she recorded a video for the network she works for. She is a tall woman with a slender figure and long brown hair and has no visible flaws — well, except for wrinkles. As we follow her off the set, she enters a long orange hallway with posters of herself dating back to when she started. As she begins to walk down the hallway, she is wished happy birthday by everyone who passes her, a continuous reminder of her age. This scene was deliberate in setting up what was to come and the decisions she would make throughout the movie.
Sparkle finds the women's restroom is out of order, and she goes into the men's room, where we are introduced to her pig of a boss, Harvey (Dennis Quaid). He is angrily talking to someone on the phone about a replacement for Sparkle saying, “We need her young, we need her hot, we need her now.” Sparkle overhears this, and becomes self-conscious — rightfully so. She is then called into his office and let go due to her age.
On her drive home, she crashes her car whilst watching a billboard of her being taken down, and at the hospital, a nurse gives her a flash drive advertising “The Substance.” “The Substance” is a black market serum that promises a “younger and more beautiful” version of oneself. When home, Sparkle, in a state of desperation, orders the kit and injects herself with the neon-green, single-use activator. She drops to the floor, and her back begins to split open, generating the younger version of herself, Sue. However, The Substance does have a slight hiccup — you must switch back to your original body every seven days and must inject yourself with stabilizer fluid again from the original body.
Sue quickly replaced Sparkle at the network she worked for and became an overnight sensation, taking over what used to be Sparkle’s life. While Sue enjoys fame, glory and praise for her looks, Sparkle turns into a self-hating recluse as she watches Sue rise to the number one spot which was once hers. As the end of Sue's one-week cycle nears, she brings home a man and delays Sparkle’s cycle by taking an extra activator out of her, which causes her pointer finger to age. After seeing this, Elisabeth calls her supplier and is made aware that any extra time causes physical alterations to the original body. She was offered the chance to stop, yet says no, still clinging to The Substance as a last resort to be seen as beautiful even if it was not her body.
Although Sparkle and Sue are the same person and share the same consciousness, Sue disregards the advice and continues to disrupt the cycle which causes Sparkle to age rapidly. Sparkle and Sue then start to despise each other. Once Sue had enough, she kept Sparkle in a room she constructed in her home, keeping a supply of stabilizer fluid on hand to continue to be the active body.
Three months pass and Sue is supposed to host the New Year's Eve show on the network, but her body begins to deteriorate. However, she has used up the supply of stabilizers she had. In a panic, she calls the supplier who tells her Sparkle needs time to regenerate the stabilizer, but Sue doesn’t have time to wait the week it takes to refill. After hearing this, Sue is hysterical and attempts to make a body double of herself using the single-use activator from the kit. However, her plan goes wrong. and results in a horrifying and grotesque ending.
“The Substance” captures the social pressure of women to maintain their beauty for as long as they can no matter what it takes. Over the past few years, there has been a trend in younger generations to use skin care products that are not meant to be used on their skin, such as retinol. The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar industry built off of insecurities, and “The Substance” is a reminder that it turns you into a consumer for life, fabricating more insecurities that make it money.
Jessica DeFino, a beauty writer and author of “The Unpublishable,” a newsletter focused on the darker sides of the beauty industry, said, “Youth is the ultimate goal, and obviously very convenient for the industry because it’s an impossible goal.” This quote is not only very prevalent in the movie, but also in real life. Aging is a privilege only so many of us have, and wrinkles are proof we are human. From smile lines and crow feet to stretchmarks and cellulite, every flaw about an aging body is beautiful because it proves you lived.