I I thought about breasts when I saw The Substance. Coralie Fargeat’s body horror fable stars Demi Moore as a newly 50-year-old, supposedly fading fitness star who makes a pharmaceutical Faustian pact that allows her to create a nubile 20-year-old (played by Margaret Qualley) who she the Replaced half the time. Breasts aren’t the main focus of Fargeat – it’s more of an ass film than a tits film – but there are plenty to see. One (minor spoiler alert?) drops bloodied to the ground at a crucial moment, and if that – far from the most harrowing part – sounds too off-putting, it’s not the film for you.

I was thinking about breasts because I had just read about the 64% increase in breast reductions in the U.S. since 2019 (not including post-surgical reconstructions or gender-affirming maxillary surgeries). Many focus on women under 30, and those under 19 represent “a small but rapidly growing portion of the market,” the New York Times reported. Women apparently want “yoga breasts” or the girly “flirty look” – a life without a bra.

By the way, Moore’s breasts, which make a brief cameo in “The Substance,” looked great. She’s 61 playing 50, presumably because a real 50-year-old actor wouldn’t show any signs of aging, which would destroy the film’s premise. Moore’s casting makes it even more uncertain: she looks incredible, far too good to need the titular substance.

However, many of us opt for more substantial solutions to body dissatisfaction, including cosmetic surgery. Bodily autonomy is a right I am very happy to defend, and there is no single motive for doing “work”: breast reductions often resolve decades of physical pain and dissatisfaction; smaller breasts attract less unwanted attention; And no one should underestimate the agony of big-breasted youth, the feeling that you can never wear what you want or escape the lustful grin.

But how much of our surgically treated dissatisfaction (augmentations are still more popular than reductions) is inherent to fat tissue and how much is culturally constructed? A 2020 “Breast Size Satisfaction Survey” found that 70% of women worldwide dislike the size of their breasts. “The commodification and questioning of breasts may influence how women think about their own bodies,” says the same study, and well, oh well.

Breasts of all sizes have been laden with cultural, erotic baggage for centuries; Ever since medieval Madonnas were depicted with a chaste, single, naked, sexy, secular couple, pornography spread with the printing press. Of course, they still are: In a scene in “The Substance,” a casting team jokes that they wish a woman had breasts on her face instead of “that nose.”

You can describe an operation as empowerment or emancipation, as “fuck you” to other people’s opinions. But it’s also about body parts appearing or feeling too big or too small or having the wrong shape. Women under 30 are increasingly avid consumers of cosmetic procedures of all kinds. The Washington Post described Generation Z’s “plastic surgery mainstreaming,” reporting on two breast augmentations and one breast reduction documented by TikTok. How quickly will this trickle down to Sephora tweens when serums no longer do the trick?

It’s a dark thought that beautiful bodies are not beautiful to their owners. This is also the case with Fargeat’s statement: “I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t have a disturbed relationship with her body.” But her film really doesn’t help, with its lingering, lascivious look at dewy youth and the portrayal of aging as explosive, grotesquely disgusting. The intent is satirical, but does satire work when it reinforces what it satirizes?

I started thinking about boobs and stopped thinking about butts. Partly because Qualley’s perfect song kept circling in front of my face over the course of the hour and 40 minutes I sat on mine at the multiplex. Partly because I read an interview with Moore promoting the film in which, despite preaching the hollow Hollywood gospel of self-love, she says twice that she doesn’t quite like the way her film looks on screen . “It’s not like there weren’t shots of me saying, ‘Ugh, my ass looks terrible.'” On the other hand, “Ugh, I didn’t love my butt.” (Although she admits this was knee-jerk Reactions were: “It’s not like I look The bad.”)

I also watched The Substance the week a woman reportedly died after a Brazilian butt lift with “liquid” filler. Its popular surgical cousin is the most dangerous cosmetic procedure; Another woman died in Turkey in August this year. This is real body horror.

Emma Beddington is a columnist for the Guardian

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