Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Illustration by Samual King

Women’s bodies have long been the target of unrealistic beauty standards upheld by the media. Makeup products, anti-aging remedies, and plastic surgery procedures can be accessed by anyone, but the mass media has made it clear: women are the ones who really need them. The 2024 body horror film, The Substance, fights back against this misogynistic proposition. It follows its main character, Elisabeth Sparkle, who was recently fired from her job for being too old on her fiftieth birthday. Distraught by this, she begins to take a drug called “The Substance” to appear “younger, more beautiful, [and] more perfect.” Elisabeth becomes increasingly disfigured by the side effects of the drug, which culminates in a gruesome, bloody ending. The film is characterised by its graphic, over-the-top depictions of the harms associated with beauty standards. It doesn’t shy away from portraying the obsessive, yet simultaneously damaging chase for the perfect body. 

Although The Substance is mainly known for its sensationalist deployment of the body horror genre to resist sexist beauty standards, something else in the film caught my eye, too. Of course, it was hard to look away from Elisabeth’s physical transformation as she developed excessively wrinkled skin, grew multiple eyes, and eventually became so disfigured that she resembled something like a monster out of a sci-fi movie. But the film’s usage of visual techniques didn’t end there. In contrast with The Substance’s more overt depictions, the film also contains scenes defined by their subtlety. Although much less obvious, these are equally important in fulfilling the film’s goal of criticizing beauty standards. 

The scenes I’m talking about take place in Elisabeth’s bathroom: the place where she first injects “The Substance” in an attempt to become “more beautiful.” What I first noticed was how the bathroom was presented in contrast to all other locations in the film. Most of these other scenes were filmed against backdrops of vibrant colours and bold imagery, like the studio where Elisabeth’s aerobics class took place. These scenes are loud and captivating. In comparison, the scenes filmed in Elisabeth’s bathroom are the opposite: the space is eerily quiet, solitary, and is adorned only with stark white tiles. Despite its emptiness, some of the film’s most important scenes take place in the bathroom. It is where Elisabeth internalizes beauty standards after looking in the mirror and consequently, where she continues her never-ending chase for the “perfect” body. These scenes aren’t important in spite of the bathroom’s emptiness- rather, the solitude is what allows Elisabeth to continue to self-destruct. 

This representation serves as a useful visual metaphor for how beauty standards affect women as individuals. Women and girls are constantly bombarded with images of supposed perfection in the media. These exist in makeup ads, Photoshopped social media posts, and in prevalent diet, wellness, and weight loss trends, only to name a few. Like the scenes in most of the outside locations in The Substance, these representations are visually overwhelming, as they are constantly being shoved down our throats. However, as we begin to internalize these beauty standards, they eventually become reproduced in the privacy of our own homes. Many of us become our harshest critics while we are alone, in front of our bathroom mirrors. In these spaces, staring into our reflections, many of us have imagined how our looks could possibly be improved. Maybe our skin could be clearer, our noses smaller, or our hair less frizzy. Many of us are then motivated to fix ourselves. We buy makeup to cover our flaws, or a million different types of skincare to solve an issue that only we noticed. Thus, Elisabeth’s experience reflects the reality of hundreds of women and girls, if only on a slightly more exaggerated scale. As she stares into her reflection in her eerily empty bathroom, it is evident that she has become her harshest critic, vulnerable to the misogynistic beauty standards that she has so deeply internalized. There is no one there to sway her opinion or encourage her to continue taking “The Substance,” which is the scariest part: the beauty standards have already won. 

The Substance doesn’t offer any solutions to this problem, but it doesn’t need to. Its resistance to normative beauty standards is already enough. Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated, it has been celebrated for its unapologetic feminist themes. Representation is an important step toward making real-world changes, and The Substance has definitely played its part.