A film about a woman who injects herself with a black market drug to become younger and more beautiful won an Oscar. The beauty industry responded by launching three new anti-aging serums. Nobody saw the irony.
In Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, aging aerobics star Elisabeth Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday, then injected with a black market drug that creates a younger clone of herself. The clone is everything the industry wants. Young. Taut. Unlined. Available.
The original is disposed of.
Sound familiar?
What the film actually says
This is not a horror film about a drug. It is a horror film about a mirror.
Ten-year-old girls are now using retinol and offering unsolicited advice like “don’t smile too much to avoid expression lines.” That is the world the film is set in. That is the world we are already living in.
Satirical body horror is exploding on screen The Substance, Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty on FX starring Bella Hadid, LA noir thriller Skincare starring Elizabeth Banks. All processing the same anxieties through a visceral lens.
Three major productions in one year all saying the same thing. The beauty industry is a horror show. The fashion industry which invented and sustains the beauty industry has not yet acknowledged that any of this is about them.
The fashion connection nobody is making
We rarely see older women as central characters in films. When wrinkles appear, they are treated as imperfections. Male actors continue to play leading roles in romantic films well into middle age while women in their 40s are relegated to maternal roles.
Fashion does the same thing. Quietly. Efficiently. Without the blood.
The model who was everywhere at 22 disappears at 30. The campaign that celebrated “real bodies” lasts one season before the brand returns to its usual casting. The designer who says “I dress women of all ages” shows a collection where the oldest model is 28.
The Substance puts a name and a body to what fashion has been doing for decades. It just does it with more gore.
Demi Moore and the real story
Demi Moore’s casting reflects her own personal experiences. Once celebrated for her beauty, she faced years of public criticism for her appearance something her male counterparts rarely encounter. Casting her adds a level of authenticity that blurs the lines between fiction and reality.
She did not just play Elisabeth Sparkle. She was Elisabeth Sparkle. Every industry that discarded her and then celebrated her comeback because she still looked good enough is the same industry the film is indicting.
What changes now
Fiction working at the level of interiority does something that spectacle cannot it gets inside the minds of women prepared to take huge risks for the promise of youth or a certain aesthetic. Through the desperation of their characters, these stories uncover the class, race and feminist issues underpinning the lunchtime tweakments sold on Instagram.
The conversation has started. The question is whether fashion joins it or continues to sell anti-aging cream as a sidebar to the editorial about empowerment.
The industry cannot have it both ways forever.
At some point the mirror cracks.
