As Sue (Margaret Qualley) is plunging a needle into an infected wound, consumed by a single-minded pursuit of perfection and unable to stop herself, despite it destroying what’s left of Elisabeth’s (Demi Moore) body and life, it becomes clear she is hooked on chasing beauty and ‘fixing’ her every imagined flaw.

Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body horror film The Substance follows Elisabeth’s journey as she experiments with an unregulated injectable drug that guarantees to make her a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. As Elisabeth is shoved out, Sue is ushered in, and while, at first, the 2 uphold the foundations, soon the characters’ actions spiral uncontrolled, starting to exhibit classic signs of substance dependency – experiencing physical withdrawal symptoms, pleading for it to stop, only to relapse at the primary opportunity. 

Though the self-harm Elisabeth inflicts is difficult to look at, the audience’s callous chuckles were equally difficult to hearken to. In her Substack essay on the film, beauty critic Arabelle Sicardi writes how the lads next to her “laughed in delight.” Similarly, Mina Le, a fashion and culture YouTuber, argued that “the general messaging got here off as unsympathetic to older women who partake in anti-ageing procedures. My theatre laughed as Demi Moore’s character became more archetypical of a hag, as if the takeaway was that she deserved the whole lot that happened to her in her lust for vanity.”

In a culture that prizes physical appearance as much as ours does, the pursuit of beauty is difficult to withstand and tricky to sentence. Research has confirmed that ‘pretty privilege’ equates to being considered more intelligent, trustworthy and sort. It influences incomes, raises salaries and sways final decisions on promotions. Yet, obtaining something as slippery as beauty stays nearly unattainable, because of its inherent subjectivity and rapidly shifting evolution. And now the barriers to entry are higher than ever. Dermal fillers, thread lifts and buccal fat removal are only a fraction of the (expensive, dangerous) procedures introduced to assist people obtain beauty and its promised byproducts: social acceptance and profession success.

This will leave people stuck in a perpetual state of chasing an unattainable ideal, fighting against the natural ageing of their bodies, and falling right into a “perception drift” cycle, where you get hooked on the sensation of ‘glowing up’ and lose sight of what you appear to be. Dr Jamie Feusner, a professor of psychiatry on the University of Toronto, says there are multiple studies which indicate that around 13 per cent of patients at cosmetic surgery clinics and 11 per cent at dermatology clinics are more likely to have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a mental health condition characterised by an awesome preoccupation with perceived flaws in a single’s physical appearance.

And yet, while people feel under incredible pressure to realize unattainable, ever-changing standards, and there’s an expectation of a certain level of beauty maintenance, when partaking in the wonder industry you’re just as more likely to get punished as you’re rewarded. Take essentially the most recent season of Love Island, for instance, during which lots of the female contestants were ridiculed for what some viewers saw as ‘overdone and ineffective’ cosmetic surgery and cosmetic work. Social media was flooded with content mocking the surplus, including from medical professionals like Dr Daniel Barrett, who played a ‘guess the contestant’s age’ game. 

“Moderately than criticising our culture for making young women imagine that they need cosmetic surgery to suit into today’s unattainable beauty standards, those commenting are more concerned with the actual fact these women’s procedures are detectable and ‘failed’ to make them look youthful,” as Halima Jibril wrote in her piece on the subject. “The very last thing we should always do is mock these women.”

And yet time and time again, we see women who’ve undergone cosmetic work that individuals deem “unsuccessful” being mocked, punished and even face a type of dehumanisation. Swiss socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein was nicknamed ‘Cat Woman’ for her feline features after quite a few facelifts and eye threadings. While the Duchess of Alba, a outstanding Spanish aristocrat, was dubbed the ‘Pekingese with Botox’ by the Every day Mail. Each sought to feel beautiful, younger, desirable and accepted – only to be likened to animals, reframed as punchlines in newspapers and stigmatised in on a regular basis conversations.

From a psychologist’s perspective, a “beauty addict” is usually defined as someone who undergoes procedures seeking a “high” or a particular reward. Dr Feusner emphasises that these behaviours (especially when repetitive) may be viewed as “compulsive” in a psychiatric context, as they are sometimes performed to alleviate negative emotions of insecurity or self-hatred. Nonetheless, currently, beauty addiction is usually viewed by the general public as an ethical failing, the results of being too vain, or too poor to afford a “good” surgeon. In consequence, there’s an absence of compassion for those afflicted by it. 

In an ideal world, in accordance with Dr Michail Malandrakis, a London-based oculoplastic surgeon and facial aesthetician, the industry would embrace a holistic approach, where the mental health of a patient is taken into account alongside their requested procedure, where beauty clinics are staffed with each psychologists and facial aestheticians. But we will not be yet there. As an alternative, we lack sympathy, projecting our anxieties and fears around ageing and unattainable beauty standards onto the bodies of girls who’re simply attempting to live by the foundations laid out by society. The result, satirically, is that the acute beauty standards remain unchallenged, while individuals who’ve tried to realize them (and been told they failed) are left under attack. Ultimately, nobody feels more soothed, and nobody feels more beautiful.