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Surface Over Substance: The Relative Value of Women’s Work in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance

In The Substance, the worth of women is bound explicitly and repeatedly to their youth and desirability. Fargeat suggests that a woman’s ability to perform valuable labor is, in the eyes of the entertainment industry, an asset they only have for a finite amount of time. If a woman’s value in the workplace is directly tied to her physical appearance, then aging is a career-ending event. Elisabeth Sparkle’s career follows this trajectory, and on a smaller scale so do the ill-fated lives of Sue and Monstro Elisasue. 

Elisabeth faces abrupt dismissal from her primary source of income when she turns fifty. The industry that once celebrated her talent now deems her obsolete overnight. Her producer Harvey’s words confirm what Elisabeth already fears: remaining relevant as an actor can be nearly impossible for women after they reach a certain age. Their place in the studios and on the movie sets of Los Angeles exists only as long as they remain desirable. The more they age, the less valuable their work is to the studio executives who determine their worth. They can struggle to maintain their youth as much as they want to, but it’s a losing game. The link between youth and employment in The Substance is a literal expression of a real system that treats women as disposable. 

The film expands on this idea by revealing how the nature of labor itself changes based on a woman’s perceived value. When Elisabeth is young, her work as a celebrity consists of performing perfectly and maintaining her physical appeal. These qualities define her career far more than her expertise at any job. Once she begins to age, her value in these areas of her discipline decreases significantly. This is not because she’s lost her ability—indeed, a 50-year-old Elisabeth outperforms all of her backup dancers in the shoot for her fitness show at the beginning of the movie— but because her body and face no longer fit the industry’s aspirational standard. Her “work” switches from using her body to the best of her ability to maintaining and improving it as best she can. Using her self-hatred and body dysmorphia as motivation and The Substance as a tool, she attempts to outwit the passage of time. 

Elisabeth’s decision to use The Substance reveals the extreme lengths that women are required to go to once there’s even a suggestion they are past their prime. The process makes explicit what the industry already implicitly demands. Men like Harvey do not see women like Elisabeth as individuals. Rather, they view woman as a product, and young, beautiful products are easiest to market and sell. As women age, they must compete not against others but against younger versions of themselves. The film makes clear that even with extreme intervention, the connection between youth and the value of women’s work remains absolute. Once a younger option becomes available, the older version inevitably loses her place. 

The relationship between Sue and Elisabeth also reflects the generational cycle of women in the workplace. Elisabeth’s initial hope is that The Substance will make her younger. Instead, it makes a younger version of “her” who can replace her. She hopes that making Sue will allow her to continue her career, but Sue’s survival actually depends on replacing Elisabeth completely. Sue, created to keep Elisabeth relevant, ultimately becomes the reason she can no longer work. Youth itself holds power, not the woman behind it. 

By contrast, men who control the industry (like Harvey) never have to deal with threat of an expiration date. Harvey remains eerily unchanged throughout the movie, as though the passage of time has no effect on his ability to perform his job. Elisabeth’s struggle reflects a broader truth: in many fields, women’s labor becomes invisible as they age. The film exposes how youth is not just an advantage but a requirement for women to participate in certain kinds of work. Although it’s bleak, the movie’s ending does not only suggest that Elisabeth failed in her attempt to remain relevant, it also underlines the fact that the system was always designed to reject her. In the world of this film, there are no female winners in the long-term. The only people who make lasting profits from women’s youth and beauty are the executives who exploit it. The Substance presents women’s success in the professional world as being inseparable from the value attached to their faces and bodies. No matter how much talent or experience they possess, the relative value of their work depends on factors outside their control. The film does not just depict an industry that prefers youth—it highlights the irony and cruelty in a system that pits women against one another as it sets them up to fail.  

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