Coralie Fargeat’s new body-horror film The Substance starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley is, to put frankly, a wild ride. The film, about an aging celebrity who takes a medical substance to regain her youth, explores how a woman’s value is inextricably linked to beauty — and the ends we can be pushed to to hold onto it.
The film has been making waves (and headlines) for exploring the lose-lose choice women find themselves making as they age: spend untold thousands to hold onto their youth? Or risk fading into societal obscurity?
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a once beloved aerobics TV instructor who loses her television program simply because she is no longer the 20-something starlet she once was.
Devastated by the loss of her job due to her age, she accidentally crashes her car on the way home, and in the hospital, post-crash without any significant injuries, a nurse identifies her as a perfect candidate for the ‘substance,’ a florescent green elixir touted as being the secret to eternal youth.
After injecting the potion beneath her skin, she’s able grow a second body and experience life as a younger woman for a seven day period. Elisabeth’s mind and memory aren’t linked with her younger-counterpart, played by Margaret Qualley, and what follows between the pair is an unflinching quest for youth.
Elisabeth’s experience of ageing is amplified under the technicolour magnification of Hollywood’s gaze, with every inch of her skin scrutinised as it undergoes the natural (and with the addition of the substance, not so natural) ageing process, but what is this experience like for women who aren’t living under Hollywood’s demonising glare?
A 2021 study asked 7,325 Australians aged between 16 and 65 the impacts ageing has on what they find attractive. It found that Australian men place a higher priority on physical build compared to women. Women on the other hand were more likely to place a higher priority on education, intelligence and emotional connection. In fact, they valued it nine to 14 points higher than their male counterparts.
The normalisation to look young through injectables and fillers feels like it’s reached a feverpitch, and while there’s is no industry-wide data for rates of anti-wrinkle injections in Australia the rise of TikTok trends like preventive botox has seen anecdotal accounts from practitioners stating that they’re “busier than ever.”
Young women are now confronting the realities of ageing at a much younger age than a decade ago and the stress of ageing can feel omnipresent for many young Australian women.
While The Substance takes ideas about ageing to a gruesome extreme, it taps into some deep truths around how women experience the world around them as they age. We spoke with three women about their personal experiences with ageing.
Sarah, Age 59
Sarah is a teacher living in Sydney. As she entered her 50s, she found the way she was moving around the world started to change.
“When you start to age and you start to go into menopause you become invisible because women are seen as the value of procreation,” she told PEDESTRIAN.TV. “We live in a patriarchal society, and beauty is regarded as something of great value, so if you don’t have that, it can feel like you’re not really worth anything.”
Sarah found that as she got older she had to change the types of clothes she was wearing because as an older woman some styles suddenly became not appropriate for her to wear.
“It’s quite confusing and so you have to sort of alter yourself to be able to fit into the kind of age pecking order of where you sit and that’s very challenging.”
When asked about how she overcomes these feelings of ageing she said that true beauty comes from within and that we are all beautiful in our own way.
For Sarah being true to who you are and not allowing those societal pressures to impact her helps her feel beautiful in her own skin.
Michele, Age 40
Michele thinks about ageing daily. She’s a radiographer in Sydney, and is reminding of her years when she sees her patients’ dates of birth compared to her own.
Thinking back, Michele recounted how her mother never often spoke about ageing and she feels as though this has influenced how she connects with growing older as a woman.
“Age is how you feel, it really is a number and it’s really how you feel within,” she said. “It doesn’t matter because it’s inevitable, everyone’s going to age so it’s how you embrace it.”
Michele said that focusing on the present is the most precious advice she could give to young women in her 20s as they experience the social pressures of ageing.
“I think living each moment and being in the present moment, that’s more important than worrying about the future ahead of you.”
Glenda, Age 65
Glenda lives in New Zealand and does ballroom dancing for fun. Ballroom dancing has protocols that are linked to age. Glenda explained that in her ballroom community women can’t ask men to dance. It’s a practice she describes as “quite archaic”, but as one of the younger women in the mix, it means she’s more likely to get picked to dance.
While benefiting from youth in her ballroom dancing scene, Glenda said that she enjoys being older. After all, with age comes wisdom and experience, and she enjoys that people look up to her for possessing those qualities.
For Glenda, ideas of vanity and beauty transcend culture and despite Demi Moore experiencing ageing as a white woman, Glenda feels that the thing that remains true across beauty standards is that real beauty comes from within.
“Inner beauty comes from confidence, that’s what makes [women] who they are. It’s what they believe in,” she said.
“Value who you are right now, at the end of the day, it’s just believing that you yourself are wonderfully made. Beauty is an eye beholder, so I would say value yourself.”
The Substance is now playing in cinemas.
The post Does The Substance’s Take On Our Youth Obsession Hold Up? We Ask 3 Women What Ageing’s Really Like appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
