” The Substance”, a fresh award-winning film about an over-the-hill star determined to recover her youthful looks and the interest and verification that come with it, instantly caught my attention. However, the show’s full idea suffers from one dangerous and dishonest weakness in the form of its leading artist, Demi Moore.
” The Substance” is a “body dread film”, a dread style that depicts the hideous change of the human body. Elizabeth Sparkle, a former Hollywood star turned fitness guru, is being cast by her community as the lead female because she is too old. She accepts a mystical syringe from a total stranger, which she is told may bring back all of its fame and admiration. She accepts, and so” Sue”, her younger alter ego, is born. They are supposed to alternate every other week in the world, and the one on her “down month,” or another year, is still waiting for her turn on the toilet ground.
To no one’s surprise, Sparkle prefers being Sue and violates the “rules” of The Substance, spending more and more time as her younger self. The punishment is that she becomes a disgusting, deformed creature who rears its head ( literally ) on Sue’s big Hollywood night. The hunchbacked, earless, toothless beast has Moore’s face poking out of its side and spews blood onto the audience for about 20 minutes. That is the result of pursuing youth: You become even more repulsive than if you had just accepted aging.
The Curious Case Of Demi Button
Demi Moore hasn’t acted much after her stint as the highest-paid actress in Hollywood in the 1990s with films like” Ghost” ( 1990 ),” Striptease” ( 1996 ) and” G. I. Jane” ( 1997 ).  , After divorcing Bruce Willis, who is nearly eight years her senior, she married Ashton Kutcher, who is 15 years her junior— which feels like chasing youth in relationship form. Kutcher became a , stepdad at age 26 , to Moore’s tween daughters. The couple tried to have kids, but Moore miscarried. The relationship ended, and he moved on to same-aged pastures and married Mila Kunis, with whom he went on to have two children.
After the Moore-Kutcher marriage ended, the actress reportedly relapsed before settling in rehab. At that point, it appeared Moore was content to be a mother to her adult daughters, Bruce Willis ‘ ex-wife, who is now suffering from frontotemporal dementia, and to occasionally appear in movies.
Moore appears to have continued to obsess over her appearance despite briefly leaving the Hollywood shadows. She looks stunning — don’t get me wrong. Whatever she does, her work is of high caliber and not overdone to make her look ridiculous. But make no mistake, it’s a lot of work. She looks like she even had hand rejuvenation, no 62-year-old woman’s hands look naturally smooth like hers do.  ,
So now, as she markets” The Substance” and LARPs in the media as a women’s hero who is abandoning the “male gaze” and unattainable beauty standards, it all seems quite hypocritical. This woman is a fierce competitor to beauty standards.
lacking” Substance”
It’s thus difficult to disentangle the movie from Moore’s person. She is the embodiment of giving in to a system that values women only for their looks, even though she is being praised for “teaching Hollywood a lesson” about not valuing women only for their looks. She hasn’t fought back. She is teaching no lessons. She is actively altering her appearance. Just because she is doing it better than Madonna doesn’t mean she isn’t chasing the same absurd 25-year-old aesthetic.  ,
But it’s not just Moore’s real-life beauty pursuits that feel hypocritical. Her character spends a lot of time in the movie naked, and it seems like she is saying,” Look at how hot I am.”  , You , don’t look like this at 42, much less 62! This leaves viewers feeling inferior and Gollum-like by comparison. For Demi Moore, being naked isn’t brave, it’s boastful. Moore pretends to be both the victim and the solution while being the victim.
As a 55-year-old woman myself, I think about beauty and aging — but only in a fleeting fashion. The majority of us normies are not fixated on our appearance when we are out here. We’re busy with kids and jobs. Our work isn’t dependent on our looks, and our partners don’t care that we are aging because we’ve built an actual life together.  , Yet as a woman who was once a teen with an eating disorder, the substance of” The Substance” left me wanting. The movie intended to explore how the social ideals of femininity and beauty can cause women to dislike themselves and feel unworthy, but instead” The Substance” and its lead fueled that feeling.
There were plenty of other reasons to dislike the film, including its inconsistent aesthetic and senselessness. Is Sparkle as concerned with Sue? Does Sparkle get to enjoy the rewards of Sue-ness? If not, what’s the point of the whole affair? There’s also the fact that Sparkle seems to have no friends, no children, and no family — and perhaps that’s the main reason she isn’t grounded in anything real. However, the movie doesn’t go into that as a justification for her superficiality.
All told, the film and Moore’s presence in it feel out of touch. Other female film stars have fought Hollywood’s constant pursuit of a youthful lifestyle. These women are not J.R. Moore, Nicole Kidman, or J. Lo. They are Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, and Olivia Colman. Colman looks her age and is 51 years, which is exactly 11 years younger than Moore. And she’s won an Oscar, two Emmys, and three Golden Globes. Colman demonstrates that Hollywood’s older women can still have careers. Unfortunately, Moore doesn’t have her talent.  ,
An aging former starlet who is aware of the folly of chasing youth and still manages to make an interesting movie would have been a much more interesting one. Attempting to portray a confident aging person as a surgical patient would cause internal conflict.  ,
Demi Moore would have made a fantastic partner in that movie.
Jennifer Sey is a National Gymnastics Champion, author of” Levi’s Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice”, and founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.
