As a little girl I had ears that stuck out like big butterfly wings. Some kids at my school in Los Angeles would make fun of them, and I’d often stare at myself in the mirror wishing my ears would lay flat against my head.
But it wasn’t until landing my first major role on a TV show at age 12 that I opted to undergo ear-pinning surgery, a decision I’ve never made public until now. For years, my parents watched me struggle with private shame, though they understood I was a tough kid who could handle it. But once I knew millions of people all over the world would be judging me on their television screens, not just on a playground, that knowledge changed everything for me.
Around that time, I also wrote a poem about the kind of aesthetics I was seeing in the entertainment business, especially among women. The poem would be published years later in my first book, and in it I described women who’d gone to great lengths to stay young and desirable — the facial plastic surgeries that left them looking like “third-degree burn victims,” or the body parts that didn’t seem natural, “noses like dead poodles.” I considered myself a fiery young feminist who raged against the patriarchy.
Yet in changing my own body, I was also a hypocrite who gave in to it — because how could anyone not? Going under the knife felt like choosing a weapon I could wield in self-defense against my own disposability. It showed the world I understood the assignment of assimilation — that I could do whatever it took to fit in, never stand out, the way my ears once did.
That poem now seems like a description of a scene from “The Substance,” the body-horror film from the director Coralie Fargeat about a celebrity named Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore. According to the gospel of Hollywood (and a TV executive pointedly named Harvey), Elisabeth, having turned 50, has reached her best-by date — and the film explores, in gory and graphic detail, the price she’s willing to pay to recapture her physical perfection and stay relevant by any means necessary.
I grew up a child actress in the sexualized spotlight of the entertainment industry. Over three decades, my responsibility not just to my craft of performing but to the performance of youthfulness was reinforced constantly — whether it was being told in my 20s by a director that the key to a long-lasting career was to stay as young as possible for as long as possible, or the time I overheard an agent describe representing actresses who are past their 30s as “hell on earth.” This kind of warped thinking has become the status quo — and women can become our own worst adversaries. Would I be less happy if I had fought against the desire to get my ears pinned back, if they still stuck out today? I don’t know — but I do think about it often, and about my willingness to align myself with the industry’s expectations.
My experience, and “The Substance,” are not just Hollywood stories. These are universal realities for any woman, no matter her background or profession. The subtle messages of sexism are passed down to us as generational wisdom, almost from birth. As little girls, we are taught to value the worth of what our bodies can grow up to be, and then we spend a lifetime in debt trying to achieve it. There’s plastic surgery, yes, but there’s also the tenure of self-torment that teaches us that nothing we say, do, weigh or want is ever right — it can only be made less wrong.
I’m not saying that plastic surgery is bad or that everyone who elects to change their bodies regrets their decision — my 12-year-old self included. There can be agency and even self-love involved with the choice, and for some of us there are deeply personal reasons for doing so. But Elisabeth Sparkle is a warning to all of us about what we might be willing to destroy in the name of desirability; about the monsters we might be willing to become in pursuit of perfection.
In an interview with The Times, Ms. Moore, a veteran actress and cultural icon, addressed explicitly what she sees as the film’s theme: “That it’s not about what’s being done to us — it’s what we do to ourselves.” And in the wild final moments of “The Substance,” we see this: Elisabeth finally consumes herself, as she’s reduced to little more than a mouth trapped in the beastly body of a creature she created as part of her relentless pursuit to meet society’s impossible ideals.
There is a different version of “The Substance” that I would like to see someday, in which Elisabeth chooses not to chase youth and instead learns to love her aging self, no matter how much the rest of the world may not. That version of the story may feel too radical for the world just yet; a reminder of how much further we still need to go in centering self-acceptance and imperfection at any age in our storytelling.
At the age of 41, I am quite content with the writer, actress and artist I’ve become — encroaching crow’s feet, chin hairs and all. But I’m also not immune to wanting to feel beautiful and desired, and indulging in that need. I don’t apologize for what I’ve done, or for what I haven’t. My relationship to my body has changed, healed even, as I’ve become more protective, compassionate and honest.
The message in “The Substance,” for women everywhere, is clear: that sometimes, if we’re not careful, our commitment becomes the consequence. And there can be an untapped, collective power in not giving up on not giving in.
The post This Hollywood Horror Film Hit Close to Home appeared first on New York Times.