Lily Oh ’27
What is ingrained in society’s heads is the idea that ‘Social media is fake’. But is it really just that, fake, in our minds? It actually lingers in our minds. It grows as it eats away at bits and bits of our confidence. In front of the mirror, the small bits eaten from us become apparent. Sometimes, we try to smile to convince ourselves we are happy with our looks. Other times, we genuinely feel happy with our looks. But on certain days, we can’t help but feel smaller, less than the ‘perfect’ images we dream of.
In the body horror movie The Substance, Elisabeth Sparkle, a once-famous actress, desires to gain her younger beauty and glory again in Hollywood. She discovers “the substance”, an injectable drug that allows her to create a younger, more beautiful version of herself named Sue. However, as she continues to use the substance, Elisabeth feels more embarrassed about her old self. She eventually reaches out to the one person who still sees beauty in her old self for reassurance about her beauty. Yet, she continuously returns to the mirror to adjust her makeup, only to feel smaller and smaller, eventually failing to leave her house with her looks.
As a woman, I, too, have found myself sometimes fixing my makeup again and again, unsatisfied, before stepping outside. Any woman may have experienced this, surrendering to the beauty standards not only reinforced by social media but by society.
Amber Tamblyn’s review of The Substance suggests that women should be careful in their commitments to societal beauty standards. Initially, I could not agree with this review. Why should the victims of these standards bear the responsibility of being cautious? We cannot help but surrender to the ideals that oppress us, that we should not take responsibility for the beauty standards. However, a contrasting scene in the film complicated me: Elisabeth transforms into a horrible monster by using the substance activator again on Sue to remain beautiful to take the stage on a New Year’s Eve show. When Elisabeth eventually stands on the stage in her grotesque form, her body triggers the audience's horror. As people start panicking, her body explodes, spraying and bathing everyone with gallons of blood.
This moment for me came to be a representation of a shared responsibility among all women and men. Everyone in the audience, just like in our society, had blood on their hands but also shared suffering under the unattainable beauty standards. Our bloods on our hands and our shared suffering have led to creating more and more Elisabeths in our society, including ourselves, to become somewhat Elisabeths too. Before, I resisted the idea that women should be responsible for recognizing the harms of conforming to society’s beauty standards. But this scene forced me to think, what if we, not only women but also men, are all victims? What if, without realizing it, we are not just victims but also contributors to the beauty standards as we allow them to eat our confidence and grow?
Every time we feel smaller than ourselves in the mirror, every time we compare ourselves in the mirror to unrealistic ideals, we unknowingly feed the very standards that prevent us from growing. I now feel there may not be clear antagonists in this struggle but only victims who contributed to these ideals through their insecurities, including myself.
While it initially felt unjust to accuse us, victims, of being responsible for surrendering to the beauty standards, I now understand that we, including all women and men, play a role in this struggle. The challenge, then, is not to deny our responsibilities but to recognize them. In front of the mirror, we should not feel sole guilt but acknowledgement because only by acknowledging this, I believe, can we begin to start a change.