Body horror in The Substance18 Images
There’s a scene early on in the film The Substance where Demi Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, splits down her spine to give birth to a younger her (Margaret Qualley as Sue). Falling to the floor of her bathroom, her open back perfectly encapsulates the film’s premise: Would you be willing to tear yourself in half for a ‘better’ you? While most people probably swore they’d never take the substance, many enjoyed watching Moore navigate through a divided image. The same goes for A Different Man, another 2024 movie where an aspiring actor gets his dream face and then becomes obsessed with his old one. So why are we yearning to watch the dichotomy of beauty today play out in multiple, splintered ways?
At Gabe Gordon’s AW25 show ‘Rubber Boyfriend’ in New York, key make-up artist Susie Sobol sent models down the runway with plastic-looking skin, “off” eye make-up and rubbery lips. “We wanted to do something mask-like,” she says. “We were looking at references of face wraps that people wear after a facelift.” The looks were brought to life using Half Magic Beauty, a brand by Donni Davy, Euphoria’s legendary make-up artist. She thinks our attraction towards brutally splintered beauty could soon manifest in real life as a rebellion against flawless skin – for example an embrace of discolouration and dark circles under the eyes. “It’s boring to portray flawlessness; humans crave storytelling, emotion and even discomfort,” Davy says.
As the tension grows between our aspirational and authentic selves – our online identities and IRL realities – so does our inclination to have this duality portrayed, even in the most gruesome ways. “I think the desire for self-enhancement is as strong as the desire for self-acceptance, and that can inspire really captivating art across all mediums,” says Davy. Despite the filtered beauty standards and push towards ‘perfected’ versions of ourselves, however, she swears we’re all craving something messier and ‘more human’. This itch can be scratched by body horror scenes filled with exaggerated depictions that aren’t part of the human experience at all – like the birth of Monstro Elisasue at the end of The Substance.
Pierre Olivier Persin, the special make-up effects supervisor for The Substance, says the irony at the end of the film is that when Sparkle looks like a monster, she feels the most at peace. “Elisabeth is really unhappy as herself, but she’s frustrated at Sue, but, in the end, it’s almost like they befriend each other,” he says. “It’s a weird body therapy because suddenly you are a friend again to your inner enemy and inner self, but when you are at peace with yourself, it’s the whole world hating you.” And, perhaps, that’s what we’re hoping as we watch these split depictions of modern beauty culture: to find a way to combine all of our physical aspirations and insecurities into one fully merged form.
It’s almost cliche to attribute the splintering of our sense of self to increased social media usage, but it’s also a reality that we do now exist in both digital and physical forms. “The average adolescent receives a cell phone between 12 and 13 years old, which is directly aligned with the age that body dysmorphic disorder starts,” says Sean Leonard, a nurse practitioner at Healthy Life Recovery. Young people, especially, are stuck between two conflicting beauty ideals on social media. “On one hand, social media floods them with unrealistic beauty standards, and on the other, there’s a big push for body acceptance,” says Leah Levi, psychologist and relationships expert at Flure. “Even with the rise of body positivity, the pressure to look a certain way hasn’t gone away – it’s just created more internal conflict.”
Since body acceptance is a skill that needs to be practised over time, Rebecca L. Pearl, associate professor of the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, says those who struggle with this may end up judging themselves for judging themselves. “That just heaps more judgment and pain on top of the existing judgment and pain,” she says. While we put our relationship with ourselves under a microscope, shows like Apple TV’s Severance – which follows a group of office workers who have surgically divided the memories of their work and personal lives – have become popular reference points for how our lives oscillate between obligation and enjoyment, maintenance and relaxation. Despite the show not being about physical changes itself, people on TikTok share dreams of severing their brains at the gym to enjoy the results of working out without remembering the physical strain.
Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley describes the phenomenon of developing your self-image while being constantly conscious of how you’re being perceived as the “looking-glass self”. “It can create a fractured sense of self,” says Levi. According to Tara Well, associate professor at the Department of Psychology, Barnard College, it can also lead to increased psychological pressure, body image issues and feelings of comparison and inadequacy. At the same time, social media is providing a creative outlet for young people to experiment with multiple personas and versions of themselves. “This aligns with the developmental need to explore different facets of identity during adolescence and young adulthood,” says Well.
To live a life in constant pursuit of the latest beauty standard or trend is to be at war with one’s own body for the entirety of your ageing life – to split yourself into who you are and who you are tirelessly working to be. Away from open spines and two faces, this reality is the real body horror. In a sick twist of fate, it’s also causing us all to merge into one big beauty blob (or monster). “I think individuality is leaving the human soul,” says Mike Marino, the prosthetic make-up designer for A Different Man. “People are obsessed with how perfect they can look, but what’s happening is it’s creating a mannequin-like homogenisation of human beings.” What’s left is an empty shell, watching a ‘monstro’ on a screen and wondering why it feels like home.