Grotesque Femininity and Gaze: A Feminist Reading of The Substance (2024) and The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Abstract :
This paper examines two contemporary body horror films Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024) and Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister (2025) as cinematic critiques of patriarchal beauty standards and the commodification of the female body. Drawing upon feminist film theory, gaze theory, intersectionality, and poststructuralist thought, this analysis reveals how both films employ grotesque imagery and narrative disruption to expose the systemic violence faced by women in their pursuit of societal validation. Through visual and narrative analysis, the paper uncovers how these films reflect and resist the ideologies of gendered perfection and the internalization of objectifying norms.
Introduction: Reframing the Female Body in Contemporary Cinema :
Contemporary cinema has increasingly become a site for interrogating the complex social and psychological pressures women face in conforming to narrow ideals of physical perfection. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024) and Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister (2025) emerge as powerful case studies in feminist body horror. Both films use grotesque transformations to critique how beauty operates as a violent, commodified ideal. The Substance presents a decaying Hollywood star's desperate attempt to reclaim youth through an experimental clone treatment, while The Ugly Stepsister reimagines the Cinderella tale as a grim fable of bodily mutilation in pursuit of desirability and class mobility.
Theoretical Frameworks: Feminist and Poststructuralist Lenses
Feminist Film Theory
Feminist film theory emerged during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. It critiques how cinema reflects, reinforces, and shapes patriarchal ideologies. Ann Kaplan (1983) defined feminist film theory as the study of "how cinema constructs and maintains sexual difference and the patriarchal order." Central to this field is Laura Mulvey’s concept of the "male gaze," articulated in her seminal essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975). Mulvey argued that mainstream cinema positions women as passive objects of male desire, designed to be looked at rather than to act. This gaze is enacted on three levels: by the camera, by the male characters within the narrative, and by the audience itself.
In The Substance, this theory is made visible through Sue, the idealized younger version of Elisabeth. Sue’s body is sexualized and fragmented for visual pleasure: "an ass, boobs, legs" – all dismembered parts tailored for consumption. Elisabeth, meanwhile, is hidden, decaying, and eventually disappears, illustrating how women outside the acceptable standards of beauty are rendered invisible.
The Female Gaze
In response to the male gaze, the concept of the "female gaze" emerged. Joey Soloway (2016) expanded this concept with ideas like the "gazed gaze," which expresses the emotional experience of being watched, and "returning the gaze," where women reclaim agency by confronting their observers. Unlike the male gaze, which objectifies, the female gaze seeks to evoke empathy and identification.
In The Substance, director Coralie Fargeat uses the camera to capture Elisabeth’s private moments in unfiltered lighting and unflattering angles, showing the female body not as spectacle but as lived reality. When Sue confronts the camera with a direct, defiant look, the viewer is made aware of the act of looking itself. This moment of "returning the gaze" critiques the consumption of beauty and the violence it entails.
Intersectionality
Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), intersectionality refers to how overlapping identities gender, race, class, sexuality interact to shape one’s experience of oppression. It is not enough to examine gender alone; we must also consider how other structures of power complicate that experience.
In The Ugly Stepsister, beauty is linked to class. Elvira, who lacks the effortless beauty of her stepsister, is pressured to undergo painful surgeries to win the prince's attention. Her transformation is not merely cosmetic but survival-driven. In a society where marriage equals security, beauty becomes economic currency. This interplay of class and gender reveals how patriarchal oppression is not monolithic but deeply contextual.
Poststructuralist and Postcolonial Theory
Poststructuralism, associated with thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, rejects fixed meanings. Foucault (1977) argued that power is not just top-down but operates through everyday practices, including language, discipline, and surveillance. Gender, then, is not a biological truth but a social performance, as Judith Butler argued in Gender Trouble (1990).
In The Ugly Stepsister, Elvira performs femininity in increasingly grotesque ways. Her body is molded by societal expectation, not personal desire. She becomes a "creature" through surgeries, corsets, and starvation. The process is not portrayed as transformation but as disintegration, emphasizing that idealized beauty is both unnatural and violent.
Although neither film is explicitly postcolonial, Fargeat’s depiction of Hollywood as a global cultural force resonates with Edward Said’s notion of "cultural imperialism" (Said, 1978). Western beauty ideals dominate global media, erasing diverse aesthetics and imposing a singular, white, youthful ideal.
The Substance: Horror of the Ideal Self
Elisabeth Sparkle, once a fitness icon, is discarded at fifty by the entertainment industry. In desperation, she uses an illegal procedure to create a younger, idealized version of herself: Sue. The two share consciousness, alternating time in the physical world. As Sue becomes more dominant, Elisabeth literally deteriorates. Her body withers, skin peels, and she is eventually consumed by Sue.
This narrative literalizes the psychological toll of internalized misogyny. Elisabeth's desire to reclaim societal relevance transforms into self-destruction. Her creation, Sue, is not freedom but a violent ideal.
Gaze and Grotesque
Sue is camera-ready, smooth, and hypersexual. She is welcomed by producers, the public, and even lovers, while Elisabeth rots in secrecy. This dramatizes Mulvey’s theory: only the woman who conforms is worthy of the gaze. But Fargeat subverts this through horror. Sue’s perfection is not seductive but monstrous. Her final transformation into a hybrid beast with Elisabeth is a grotesque manifestation of society's impossible standards.
The Director’s Intent
Fargeat has stated that the film emerged from her own struggles with body image. She describes beauty standards as a form of psychological violence. Through body horror, she externalizes the pain of aging, the shame imposed on female bodies, and the exhaustion of performance. By making this horror visible, Fargeat aligns with feminist aims: to challenge, expose, and ultimately reject the myths of perfection.
The Ugly Stepsister: A Fairytale of Deformity and Desperation
In this reimagined fairytale, Elvira is pushed by her mother to win the prince’s hand, not out of love, but to secure financial survival. Her stepsister Agnes is effortlessly beautiful, while Elvira must undergo painful surgeries, swallow tapeworms, and mutilate herself in pursuit of desirability. Her transformation is not triumphant but tragic.
Feminist Allegory
Blichfeldt presents Elvira’s suffering as a direct critique of how women are conditioned to view themselves as failures unless desired by men. Mirrors and corsets are not accessories but instruments of violence. Her body becomes a battlefield. The prince is less a love interest than a symbol of societal approval.
This film aligns with Crenshaw's intersectionality. Elvira's ugliness is not just physical but economic. Beauty becomes a means of class mobility, and failure to achieve it results in social death.
Horror and Narrative Reversal
Unlike traditional fairy tales where transformation leads to salvation, Elvira’s transformation leads to ruin. The final scenes depict her as unrecognizable, a creature shaped by fear, not freedom. Blichfeldt deconstructs the romantic ideal of becoming "princess-worthy" and reveals it as a myth of submission and suffering.
Comparative Analysis: Feminine Abjection Across Genres
Though differing in tone and setting, both films explore the violent consequences of beauty as currency. In The Substance, the horror is futuristic and surreal; in The Ugly Stepsister, it is medieval and grounded. Yet both arrive at the same conclusion: women who internalize patriarchal ideals are consumed by them.
Both Elisabeth and Elvira suffer bodily decay. Their transformation is not redemptive but punishing. These films suggest that to chase ideal femininity is to participate in one’s own destruction.
Moreover, both directors employ the female gaze. Fargeat gives us Elisabeth’s intimate breakdowns; Blichfeldt shows Elvira's agony from within. In both cases, the viewer is asked not to judge but to feel to inhabit the pain of being looked at and never quite measuring up.
Conclusion: Toward a Feminist Cinema of Resistance
The Substance and The Ugly Stepsister stand as urgent feminist critiques. They reject sanitized portrayals of femininity and instead reveal the grotesque truth: that beauty, as defined by patriarchy, is violent, consuming, and often fatal. By grounding their narratives in feminist theory from Mulvey’s gaze to Butler’s gender performativity and Crenshaw’s intersectionality these films contribute to an evolving cinema that challenges rather than conforms.
They also demonstrate the power of genre, particularly body horror, to make invisible pain visible. The body becomes a text of resistance, marked with scars, wounds, and mutations that speak louder than perfection ever could. In these stories, horror is not an escape from reality but a confrontation with it a mirror held up to a world that demands inhuman perfection and punishes anything less.
Works Cited :
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