In comparing these two movies, you notice that both of these women subject themselves to experimental and dangerous beauty treatments, despite the fact that Elisabeth is fifty and Elvira is a teenager. It should be noted that no matter what age you are, if you are in a woman’s body, you will be judged. You must always look younger, prettier, lighter, held to a virtually unattainable standard that no human can feasibly keep up with. These standards keep women of all ages oppressed, insecure, and self-loathing, only getting validation from the men who are actively working to oppress them. For Elvira, it’s the prince, and for Elisabeth/Sue, it’s the men she works for. For both, it’s also society at large. While The Ugly Stepsister takes place in the 1880s, The Substance is a modern-day fairy tale, illustrating that not much has changed for women over the years. We are constantly expected to groom ourselves to be the hottest, most fertile, and those standards have consistently loomed over women for generations.
The beauty treatments in both movies are notable, namely because of the risks involved. The Substance is an injectable liquid that causes your spine to rupture, birthing a new, younger version of yourself. The user has to repeatedly extract blood from the source into the new person to transfer the consciousness between the two, who are strictly designated to alternate one week on, one week off. If one does not “respect the balance”, it can cause rapid aging in the original user and disintegration in the new self. If The Substance is used a second time, it causes a monstrous amalgamation between the two to grow, eventually exploding into a rain of guts and gore.
With The Substance being an injectable treatment, it’s easy to draw comparisons between that and Botox, a treatment that must be used with caution and is designed to change your body. Over nine million Botox treatments are performed annually, a result of people being terrified to show any signs of aging, much like Elisabeth in the film. Botox carries its own risks, such as muscle weakness and drooping eyelids, and is recommended to be administered only every three to four months. Similar to The Substance, any beauty treatment like this cannot be overdone, for caution of permanent disfigurement.
“Whether you’re in 1880 or today’s TikTok culture, being skinny is what’s seen as desirable.”
Similarly, The Ugly Stepsister has its own risky beauty treatment, that being the tapeworm. In the film, Elvira is given a tapeworm egg that she swallows, intending for it to eat whatever she puts in her stomach, allowing her to lose weight quickly. Eventually, the tapeworm grows, causing her frequent vomiting at the worst moments, eventually taking the antidote that expels the now rope-like tapeworm from her body through her mouth. She hurts herself this way and through all of her beauty treatments, and she doesn’t even win the prince. What was all of it for?
One Letterboxd review of The Ugly Stepsister reads, “RIP Elvira, you would’ve loved Ozempic.” Another injectable, Ozempic, is intended as a once-weekly treatment meant to mitigate type 2 diabetes. However, many people simply use it for weight loss, even if, like Elvira, they aren’t particularly in need of a weight-loss drug. The side effects for misuse are not unlike Elvira’s tapeworm- they are mostly gastrointestinal. Whether you’re in 1880 or today’s TikTok culture, being skinny is what’s seen as desirable, even if the ways to go about it are not healthy or safe.
Regardless of the treatment in either of these films, the goal is clear: to cater to the male gaze and to society’s idea of “beautiful.” Elvira and Elisabeth have something very true and very real in common. They both want to be loved. They both want people to validate them, to accept them for who they are, even if they have to change everything about themselves in the most brutal and unforgiving ways. Unfortunately, it’s a plight that many women today can relate to, which is why beauty horror is making such a splash in modern cinema. This patriarchal society dictates that it wants its women young, hairless, sexually viable, and simultaneously looking as young as humanly possible, no matter what their age is. What these two films do is shine a spotlight on this fact and point out the absurdity and audacity of these demands on women of any age. Namely, both The Ugly Stepsister and The Substance ask a very potent question that frankly should be asked a lot more: why are we putting ourselves through all of this in the first place?
