The Substance star is finally being celebrated, but, in sexist Hollywood, how long will it last?<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Words by Nikki Peach<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/02\/imago805052447-scaled.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”31st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards – Press Room” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Oscar favourite Demi Moore has opened up about her return to the spotlight following her role The Substance<\/em>, a body horror film about the curse of ageing in Hollywood.<\/p>\n It’s arguably her most critically acclaimed film since Ghost<\/em> in 1990, but Moore says her hiatus from mainstream fame was not necessarily by choice. Hollywood is not a hospitable environment for women who dare to age or prioritise other parts of their life like starting a family.<\/p>\n \u2018For a very long time a woman\u2019s value was tied to her fertility, and when we got past a certain age, somehow we were seen as not desirable,\u2019 Moore told Screen Daily<\/em>. \u2018The irony is I feel so much more whole and complete within myself now than I ever have.\u2019<\/p>\n Grossing more than $77 million worldwide (\u00a360.6 million), The Substance is Moore\u2019s biggest cinema success in more than two decades. Her performance has earned her a Golden Globe, a Screen Actor\u2019s Guild Award, a Critics Choice Award, a BAFTA nomination and an Oscar nomination that could well become another victory on Sunday.<\/p>\n She has, in many ways, been given a second crack at Hollywood and she\u2019s seizing it with both hands. Along with her celebrated return came streams of praise for her \u2018new\u2019 appearance. Somewhat ironically, she has been lauded for \u2018ageing backwards\u2019 for looking \u2018very youthful\u2019 and told she \u2018oozes elegance\u2019 with her \u2018age-defying\u2019 appearance.<\/p>\n At first glance it might seems as though these remarks are compliments, but they are just as lumbered with misogyny as any criticism might be (and of course, as is the life of a woman in Hollywood, there\u2019s plenty of criticism too). The implication that Moore only oozes elegance because she is defying her age is exactly what it looks like: ageism. Is that not the trope at the very heart of the film she\u2019s winning awards for?<\/p>\n We are still, in ripe old 2025, only measuring beauty and desirability in relation to youthfulness. If you\u2019re young, you must do all you can to hold on to your youth, hence why there\u2019s a disturbing trend of anti-ageing tips for children as young as 12 and 13 on TikTok. If you\u2019re older, you must either surrender your desirability, as Moore said herself, or battle against the odds and invest thousands of pounds in your face and body in the hope of passing as \u2018young\u2019 again.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}”] It’s an expensive, demoralising cycle that has knock on effects on women of all ages. Then there\u2019s the less flattering commentary on Moore\u2019s \u2018new\u2019 appearance with claims that she has left fans \u2018shocked\u2019 and that she\u2019s undergone \u2018\u00a3250,000 worth of surgery\u2019, with some \u2018experts\u2019 suggesting she and has \u2018overdone\u2019 her cheeks which now look \u2018too big\u2019 for her proportions.<\/p>\n Some compliments, in fact, only exist in relation to her past appearance, referring to pictures of Moore from the Fendi show during Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris in 2021. Appearing on the catwalk in Kim Jones\u2019 Spring Summer presentation, Moore fell prey to a predictable online debate about whether she\u2019d had \u2018botched\u2019 cosmetic surgery or \u2018terrible\u2019 make up. \u2018I wouldn\u2019t have thought that was Demi Moore without the headline,\u2019 wrote one person at the time. \u2018Is that all bad fillers? Or is there some horrible contouring happening there also?\u2019<\/p>\n Another wrote, \u2018Demi Moore plastic surgery. That\u2019s a shame! I wish women would allow themselves to age gracefully.\u2019 Some recent reports have praised the actress\u2019s \u2018youthful glow\u2019 which stands \u2018in stark contrast\u2019 to her \u2018unrecognisable look\u2019 at the Fendi show. One has gone as far as to suggest Moore has finally mastered just the right amount of Botox \u2013 not so much that it\u2019s cause for concern, but just enough to keep her looking much younger than she is.<\/p>\n \u2018There might be some left,\u2019 they wrote, \u2018but it\u2019s not as obvious as before. There are other telltale signs she\u2019s relaxing on the fillers and Botox.\u2019 Adding that \u2018Demi\u2019s a natural beauty\u2019 and her friends and loved ones \u2018always wondered why she wanted to undergo all these cosmetic procedures in the first place\u2019.<\/p>\n Moore has, for what it\u2019s worth, denied having any cosmetic procedures in the past. In 2007, she vehemently denied spending \u2018\u00a3200,000 remodelling her face and body\u2019. \u2018It\u2019s completely false, I\u2019ve never had it done,\u2019 she told French Marie Claire<\/em>. \u2018But I would never judge those who have.\u2019 She added that she did not like the idea of undergoing surgery \u2018to hold up the ageing process\u2019 and said \u2018it\u2019s a way to combat your neurosis, the scalpel won\u2019t make you happy\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018That said,\u2019 Moore continued with a prophetic Substance-esque remark, \u2018the day when I start crying when I look at myself in the mirror might be the day when I\u2019m less adamant about not having it done.\u2019<\/p>\n Of course, almost two decades have passed since Moore made those comments. Now, tabloid sources say that while the Hollywood obsession with surgery has gotten \u2018way out of control\u2019 in recent years,\u00a0 \u2018Demi isn\u2019t falling for it.’<\/p>\n \u2018She\u2019s still focused on maintaining her youthful glow,’ one report read. ‘But she\u2019s opting for less invasive things like micro needling, facials and just taking care of herself with diet, exercise and getting plenty of sleep.\u2019<\/p>\n How ‘good or bad’ Moore looks, what she\u2019s had done or whether she takes a moral stance against cosmetic procedures are all besides the point. She is still a woman who was sidelined in her career for years and made to feel \u2018undesirable\u2019 for ageing, then criticised time and time again for endless alleged procedures, only to finally receive praise and respect when she\u2019s considered to have aged just the right amount.<\/p>\n We can all appreciate the message The Substance<\/em> presents, even if it doesn\u2019t necessarily move it forward or offer any new critique. We even appreciate it enough to make a revered icon of Moore in the second wind of her career, but we still seem incapable of learning anything from it. Moore is just as much a victim of the Hollywood ageing narrative as Elizabeth Sparks is, even if, thankfully, her body remains safely intact.<\/p>\n Accepting her Golden Globe in January, Moore herself said, \u2018I\u2019ll just leave you with one thing that I think this movie is imparting. In those moments when we don\u2019t think we\u2019re smart enough, we\u2019re pretty enough, we\u2019re successful enough, or basically just not enough. I had a woman say to me, \u201cJust know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n It would be a lot easier to put that message into practice if the measuring stick wasn\u2019t constantly used to poke us all into a corner and whack our self-esteem \u2013 but we’ll keep trying.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] Photo: <\/b>IMAGO<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She was trolled for being \u2018botched\u2019, now she\u2019s praised for looking youthful – and so continues Hollywood’s ageism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7505"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7562,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions\/7562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘Just know you will never be enough’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]