The Grotesque Feminine
When perfection becomes grotesque: womanhood, decay, and the death drive of beauty.
Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkles in The Substance (2024), directed by Coralie Fargeat and styled by Emmanuelle Youchnovski, embodies the violence of self-scrutiny in a light that makes this moment feel almost surgical as she dissects herself. Courtesy of Mubi. Available via BBC News © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
When The Substance premiered, the reactions were swift and shallow: “too slow,” “too gory,” “too weird.” But beneath the body horror and hot pink viscera lies something far more disturbing: a mirror held up to the way we treat women once they’re no longer young, pretty, and profitable. What many dismissed as “grotesque” is actually a brutal feminist manifesto about age, image, and the impossible pressures of being desirable and disposable all at once. If you didn’t get it, maybe that was the point.
Because what The Substance really exposes, beneath the goo and glam, is that in a patriarchal world, a woman who is no longer alluring becomes invisible, obsolete. Elisabeth isn’t punished for being unkind or unprofessional. She’s punished for not being young. The second her body stops being profitable, the system she’s served for decades turns on her. From the producer who critiques her like she’s expired meat, to the biker who switches from flirt to asshole the moment she’s not in Sue’s skin. Even the old balding shareholders at the New Year’s show, asking Sue to smile whilst her teeth are literally falling out of her mouth, they all mirror a system that only values women as long as they’re consumable. The message is clear: a woman’s worth is directly tied to how fuckable, fresh, and pleasant she is, or at least how well she fakes it. There is no place for an aging woman.
Yet, even knowing all this, Elisabeth still tries. She does what women are taught to do: adapt, beautify, survive. She falls for it all over again as Sue, ignoring the fact that they would throw her out like trash if someone better came along.
She gets ready for her date by carefully applying makeup, only to end up angrily wiping it off when her reflection doesn’t meet her impossible standards. And the worst part is she looks stunning! It’s Demi Moore, for God’s sake, and yet it’s not enough. That’s the irony, we’re told she’s decaying, but she’s still objectively gorgeous. It’s like that moment in Barbie when Margot Robbie’s character says “I’m not pretty anymore,” and the film literally cuts to a narrator note reminding us: “note to filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong casting for this line”. The Substance does the same thing, but harsher: it shows us that there is no such thing as “beautiful enough,” because womanhood under patriarchy is structured around self-loathing. No matter how flawless she looks, she’s already failed by aging.
That’s what makes the New Year’s scene so gutting. When Elisasue, now a stitched-together, rotting hybrid of both women, sits down to get ready, she’s calm. Focused. Almost delicate. She curls the one strand of hair she has left. She adds earrings. She adjusts the paper mask with Elisabeth’s printed face on it, trying to tape it on just right. Her body is deformed beyond repair, there’s literally a breast growing out of her shoulder, and yet she still performs femininity with care. The contrast is brutal: Elisabeth, still beautiful, still whole, had broken down in front of a mirror, smearing makeup across her face in shame. She couldn’t bring herself to go out. But this abject monster? She shows up. Glammed up and falling apart. Because even the grotesque version of her knows the rule: when you’ve spent your entire life being consumed, what do you do once you’re empty? You keep performing until there’s nothing left.
There’s this underlying addiction to self-improvement baked into our culture. We’re unable to stop transforming. Once you start altering yourself to be seen as valuable, how do you know when to stop? There’s always more to fix. A tweak. A lift. A better version of the better version. Elisabeth doesn’t just take the substance once. She goes back. She gets addicted to the “better version”, even when it’s destroying her. That’s exactly the same loop we’re stuck in today. The “natural look” isn’t natural. It’s contour, threads, botox. You can’t age. You can’t bloat. You can’t decay. You can’t be human.
There is no final form. No arrival. No satisfaction. Only constant updates, tweaks, and enhancements, even if it kills you. Injecting Sue is the ultimate sign that even perfection isn’t safe. That in this world, being beautiful doesn’t set you free, it just raises the bar.
“You are one. Respect the balance.” That’s the main rule of the substance, and the first to be broken. Sue doesn’t share time with Elisabeth, she steals it. She overstays, drains her, leaves her body rotting on the cold hard floor for months. What one side takes, the other loses: the younger, desirable self will always consume the older one, because she’s the one the world wants. Even outside of Sue, the world pushes the balance’s collapse. The producers want more of Sue. The men want to see her, not Elisabeth. The public validates her, rewards her, embraces her. No one’s rooting for balance. Everyone’s rooting for beauty, for youth. A woman who’s been taught to disappear will never win against the version of herself that’s been taught to shine.
When the film ends, Elisabeth is nothing but flesh melted into her Hollywood star. A street cleaner wipes her off the pavement like she's grime. No one mourns her. No one remembers her. It’s the same shot from the beginning of the movie, a full loop. The cycle starts again. Another woman will take the substance. Another “Sue” will be born. The horror is in the quiet way she disappears, like she never mattered. She was adored, sold, used, and then discarded. Her stardom was never hers. Just rented.
People overlooked the message of the movie because it forced them to look at aging, decay, and how far a woman has to go just to stay in the room. It’s a horror movie that doesn’t comfort you with catharsis. It offers no relief, no revenge, no justice. Only rot. And the terrifying part is that none of it is exaggerated. The real world already asks women to destroy themselves slowly, quietly, and beautifully. The Substance just shows you what that really looks like, unfiltered, unflinching, and projectile-spurting blood out on a stage.
