'The scariest part of Demi Moore's new horror movie was what it showed me about myself.'

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Substance.

"Yeah, I'd do it too," I thought of "the substance", as I sat in the dark cinema watching Margaret Qualley's young, absolutely flawless, gleaming, blemish- and scar-free, toned and yes — thin — body writhe onscreen. The opportunity to be the human embodiment of the 🫦 lip-biting emoji 🫦? To live as a 20-something all over again? I couldn't deny it — I wanted that.

But to see Demi Moore want it? That's THE Demi Moore — the same one who was known for her own flawless body for so long, first in erotic thrillers, then for her culture-shifting Vanity Fair cover, and for us millennials, for her villainous turn in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. That hit different. Because Demi Moore, in my mind, at least, remains hot. Not "hot for her age". Objectively hot. And hot people don't need to be hotter, right?

Margaret Qualley in The Substance. Image: Mubi.

But Coralie Fargeat's The Substance isn't about whether Moore's character is hot. It's about youth.

After Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is fired from her job as a television fitness instructor for simply being her age, she spirals. Once a Hollywood star of the highest order, it's clear that Elisabeth has lost her sparkle. That is, until she's presented with an opportunity: The Substance.

'The Substance' is a black-market drug that replicates cells, temporarily creating a younger, better version of oneself. It comes with clear rules: "Activate once, stabilise daily and switch every week", with no exceptions. The final step? "Remember you are one."

What unfolds, of course, is a series of events that disregard these rules, and the result is an unforgettable cinematic experience and one of the best body horror films to be released in decades. The film is scary, gory and very funny. It's certainly not subtle, but it doesn't need to be. Moore and Qualley (who plays 'Sue') deliver stellar performances, and it's a movie that's lingered in my mind for weeks after watching it.

Watch the trailer for The Substance. Article continues below.

The Substance and the value of youth.

Recently I've been thinking about how much value I place on holding onto my youth. Back in 2020, I was checking into a psych ward and the nurse gasped in disbelief when I told her I was 34.

"I thought it was a typo," she said.

"This is the best day of my life," I gushed gleefully.

Again, I was checking into a psychiatric hospital. Reader… it was objectively and inarguably not "the best day of my life", but I was riding high on that compliment for days.

More recently, I've been engaging with dating apps again for the first time in several years. Again, I've had people tell me they can't believe I'm 38. Even when I started the very job that has me sitting here, typing these words, a few of my coworkers gave me that same shocked response. One even made me pull out my driver's licence to prove my age. I cannot stress this enough: I was eating it up.

"It's not just that you look young," said Liv.

"No, I know," I replied, pleased with myself. "It's the vibes, the aesthetic, the whole thing. I put a lot of effort into it."

And I do.

While I've gotten older, I've maintained a grip on current trends in a manner that can only be described as white-knuckled, perhaps even pathological. Wearing an ankle sock? In the year of our lord 2024? I think the absolute f**k not. Replying 'lol' when I could say "IJBOL" or just send a keyboard smash followed by several sobbing emojis? Definitely not. Sending a GIF when I could send whatever niche reaction is trending that week? Never!!! You're simply not going to catch me ageing myself like that.

Instead, I have a Sonny Angel hanging from my rearview mirror in my car — a gift from a Gen Z friend of mine — and I make a conscious effort to keep across the celebrities and influencers who are popular with the younger generations (even if my shower playlist is more Matchbox Twenty than Addison Rae).

Let me be clear: I'm not out here denying my age to anyone. It's quite the opposite, actually. I'm not trying to catfish the masses into thinking I'm any younger than I am; I guess I just want (or maybe 'need' is the better word here) people to think of me as young in spite of my age.

Until recently, I was working at a publication that skewed more Gen Z. If you'd asked me, I probably would have argued that I need to know what the current trends are, to know who and what is popular, and how the youth are communicating, in order to do my job properly. But the truth is a little more complicated than that.

I have been infantalising myself, refusing to let myself age.

The self-imposed pressure to stay "young".

Sitting in the cinema, watching Moore reckon with herself, I felt it: the terror of being your age, the pressure society puts on us to stay young and beautiful, the fear of becoming irrelevant and invisible, and the way we internalise those messages and pressure ourselves to stay young.

At one point in The Substance, a monstrous third version of Moore's character is formed after Sue (the second version) makes the not-so-great decision to "Activate" again. Remember that rule, "Activate once"? She ignores it, long after she's abandoned the notion of switching every seven days with NO EXCEPTIONS.

"MonstruoElisaSue", as she's called, is a repulsive work of art. Determined not to miss her big moment hosting New Year's Eve, she embarks on her mission to get ready for the big night, forcing herself into the pastel princess gown Sue was supposed to wear, and painstakingly curling the one strand of hair on her head, which burns off in the curler. The moment is high camp, and squeals of laughter and disbelief erupted across the audience as poor MonstruoElisaSue tries her darnedest to get ready for her big moment.

I leaned over to my best friend.

"That's me without my wig on," I whispered, as we laughed.

You see, last year I had a hysterectomy, which has put me in early menopause. It was the final solution for a laundry list of problems, which included PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder), endometriosis, and at least one fibroid that my gynaecologist said was "so calcified it was basically a rock" after she spent four hours and seven scalpel blades cutting it into tiny pieces so she could remove it via the smallest incision possible.

My health issues date back to 2010, after an appendectomy left me with chronic, excruciating vulvodynia that lasted for years, and evolved over time into a monstrous myriad of co-morbidities for my physical and mental health as I fought to regain control over my body and life. I'll spare you the tedious and gory details, and skip to 2020, when I had what my doctor has called "a complete mental and physical breakdown". That's how I ended up spending roughly 10 weeks of that year in the psych hospital (across two stays, if it matters), and remained mostly unable to work through 2020 and 2021 as I slowly pulled my life back together piece by piece.

During that time, I spent my days and weeks bouncing between my GP, my gynaecologist, my pain specialist, my physio, my psychiatrist, my psychologist, the pain clinic, and wherever else I was referred that I may have forgotten over the years.

Thankfully, I did keep going, and life eventually got better, and a big shout out here goes to my GP, my gyno, my physio and my therapist for dragging me back from hell even when I was being an absolute brat (and not in the cool Charli XCX way, in the I-was-kind-of-a-nightmare-to-deal-with kind of way).

Now, I'm back at work, I have a social life, I'm out of my mother's house, and by all accounts, a mostly functioning adult, perhaps for the first time in my life. And yet, I have this constant, nagging sense that I am so far behind my peers in so many ways.

I know, I know — comparison is the thief of joy and all that. But it's how I feel. And more than that, I still feel like I have so much to do before I will be my "best" self, one that I feel confident putting out there on those dating apps I mentioned.

Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance. Image: Mubi.

I don't really care that the hysterectomy means I can't have biological children like some of my friends have done in the last decade or so. I don't really care that some of them own property and that I may never do the same (this is probably a good place to mention that I live in Adelaide where that remains a more attainable goal than many other Australian cities).

Rather, what gets to me is this incredible sense of lost time. That while I was busy fighting a war with my body, all my friends were meeting their partners, growing up, having life experiences, maturing and becoming adults.

It's not like I didn't do any of those things, necessarily, but when I think about how much time I lost to being sick, it makes me ache.

So here I am at 38, and sometimes I can't fathom how it happened. When my friend said we were "middle-aged" recently, I recoiled.

'Middle-aged?' I thought. 'Me? That can't be right??? I'm literally just a girl?'

But my body tells a different story, as each surgical scar whispers the secrets of the life I led to get here. My body — heavier than it once was, my hair falling out, my fingernails paper thin from the changes that menopause brought me — sometimes doesn't feel like my own anymore.

Physically, I have worked to regain control of my appearance, so that I might feel "like myself" again. I bought a wig last year to combat the hair loss, and I've been learning how to do dip powder nails at home to protect my nails from constantly breaking.

But when I say that I want to look "like myself", what I mean is my younger self. The version of me that existed before. The version of me who was young, carefree, attractive. I want to make up for lost time, and I want to feel confident doing so.

Watching Elisabeth sacrifice her current body for Sue's, and watching Sue destroy Elisabeth's body as she pushes the limits of 'The Substance', sucking the life out of her with each additional day she spends as her younger version, I saw flashes of myself.

Sitting in the cinema, in my wig, watching the gore through my dip-manicured fingers, I saw my own insecurities about ageing, my own desire for more time. I saw the way I've held myself back from life because I don't feel like I'm putting "my best self" out there — my "best self", of course, being a younger, thinner, prettier version. I recognised that desire to hide myself away out of fear of rejection.

But what's the conclusion? Am I about to throw my wig out, embrace myself wholly as I am, scars and all? Say one final "f**k you!" to the patriarchal beauty standards we all exist under?

… No.

Aside from the fact that the wig is human hair and it was f**king expensive, it's given me better hair than I've ever had before. And I like having a nice manicure. Those things make me feel more confident, and I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that.

But what I do want is to be more conscious of the motivations that lie behind my behaviour. I want to face my fear of being perceived as my actual age, and maybe loosen my obsessive grip on youth culture a little.

I want to allow myself to age in a way that honours that sense of lost time, without sacrificing my current self. I want to be able to embrace all the things I went through to get here, and to not hide from life and its infinite possibilities just because my insecurities are telling me that I'm not good enough as I am.

Basically? I don't want my desire to be Margaret Qualley to stop me from embracing my Demi Moore era.

Feature image: Mubi.