Last night, we got to see the wild ride that is THE SUBSTANCE, a grotesque take on beauty and youth standards in which an aging TV aerobics instructor is promised an alternative, cloned youthful version of herself two weeks out of the month with very specific directions. Whatever could go wrong? All the rules of course are eventually broken and delightful chaos ensues in a bloody, gory, mess of a movie that may be one of the best things I've seen all year.
The hilarious thing was we thought we might pair it with Aubrey Plaza's newest. MY OLD ASS, in which a psychedelic mushroom experience winds up with a teen girl confronting a nearly 40 year old version of herself. Sort of a flip on the SUBSTANCE, but side by side, the first looks like a Disney movie, it was so wholesome and earnest--the message being to enjoy your youth and your family because you will never be in that place again.
The movies feel like a weird distorted flipped upside down version of each other, though I am glad we saw the much calmer one first and the crazy one second. In one, the younger gets a chance to talk to her older self with all the warnings and wisdom but in the second, that younger version becomes the monster that destroys the middle age version wholly and completely. Bit by bit, and then all at once.
I keep stumbling across articles on middle age and invisibility, and maybe its just that, as a Gen Xer, we've all just been invisible for decades, but I can't say that I feel any more or less invisible than I ever did. Of course, I am not exactly fitting in the beauty standards that women, like Demi Moore's character in the film, whose paycheck depended on perkiness, thinness and smooth skin. I always used to feel like my physical self was just a vehicle, a container for what was going on in my head .My teens were a whole lot of diets and disordered eating, while my twenties was just floating in the world as a disembodied brain through college and grad school and first jobs. I've gotten better at living as a physical being in later years, but really only in my 30s and 40s.
I guess I eventually embraced my curves and learned to maximize the "assets". But even using that word is a nod to currency, of the body, of the male gaze. In certain arenas there was attention, like on dates or at parties, but mostly I coasted in a lot of spaces under the radar thankfully. (really, I don't think I would have wanted as much attention as some women get just existing.) Even if under other circumstances I would have been interested, male attention in places where I wasn't looking for it (stores, the bus, the sidewalk outside the library) really just made me angry and annoyed. There is comfort in invisibility. I have a few more shadows and lines on my face, but I am otherwise the same. I worry less about the cosmetics of aging, and more the health issues that sometimes accompany it. Not really that I am losing my beauty. Unless I am specifically thinking about the passage of time or trying to see small print in dim lighting (my one very noticeable physical change in the last decade--something I used to be able to do) I don't think about my age much at all.
The lesson of date night last night was that confronting your 18 year old version could be a great way to pass on wisdom and change your destiny. Or your 18 year old self could try to kill you. Be prepared for either.
