Inputs & Outputs

The Substance and Rejection: There are incels everywhere for those with eyes to see

Like many other horror movie/celebrity obsessives, I saw The Substance last weekend. The film features Demi Moore as a star aerobics instructor who is unceremoniously fired when she turns 50. When given the opportunity to “become a better version of herself” by injecting herself with a mysterious Substance (a jab at beauty in the age of Ozempic, Botox, and filler), she grabs at it.

I won’t spoil the rest of the plot, but I’m sure you can guess how things quickly devolve from there. Casting Moore seems to be crucial to the lore of the film: in her book, Inside Out, Moore discusses how she’s wrestled with an ED for decades, taking on roles that required intense physical transformations in order to mask her disorder. Moore struggled with equating her self worth to her appearance and the twin vises of becoming known for Her Body while hating Her Body. It’s obvious why The Substance spoke to her.

I originally had a collage of Demi Moore’s iconic roles here, but considering how every role is innately tied to her trauma, it felt wrong to include.

While I won’t spoil the film, I do want to discuss how unsubtle it is, and the discourse surrounding it seems to be wrestling with that aspect as well. The movie’s (two hour and twenty minute long) deconstruction of the “beauty=youth=worth” formula was obvious, but prickly. The shots of both Moore and Margaret Qualley’s bodies were long and clinical, leaving no crevice unseen. People have claimed that by sexualizing their bodies, the movie is perpetuating the same system it seeks to take down.

This is a common failure of analyzing a text, and a danger of satire: if the audience can’t tell something is satirical, then the work will be less effective. I’d argue The Substance fully steers clear of this: as I said above, the movie makes no bones about its message, it is very clear. I promised I would avoid internet culture takes for a while, but it’s unsurprising to me that people think depiction=endorsement when we’re still having “does having a racist fictional character in a piece of media make the author racist” takes in 2024.

What was interesting to me was the complete lack of agency the characters had. In the world of The Substance, there was no wiggle room: to be beautiful was to be young, and to be young was to be powerful, no questions asked.

I’ve talked on TikTok about the incel logic proliferating across social media over the last ten years, and a bit in The Pretty Problem. I also recently talked about the failing of sociology language, wherein people are glomming onto serious academic terms they’re learning on social media, divorced from their real meanings, and using them as justifications or shields to prevent accountability. (See: Anna Marie Tendler blaming “the patriarchy” for every failed relationship she’s ever had, people on TikTok saying capitalism prevents them from having hobbies, etc.) 

At worst, it’s poisonous: in The Pretty Problem, I showed multiple examples of Black girls and women declaring themselves unlovable because of their skin tones, race, or bodies. When you live in a racist society, it’s easy to believe the garbage being spewed at you is infallible. The work of sociology is to understand those systems and see them not as immovable and unchangeable, but systems of thinking and acting that can be dismantled. Believing no one will ever love you because you don’t look like Livvy Dunne is a systemic failure, not a personal one.

The Pretty Problem

The problem with incel logic is that you cannot gamify life by reducing it to a system of inputs and outputs. The (frankly, facile) belief that by being the thinnest, the youngest, and the most beautiful you will inure yourself from pain is laughable. Ask anyone who’s flopped out of New York or Los Angeles: this world is full of very beautiful people who aren’t showered with success simply because of their looks. While there are many people who fit that bill in Hollywood, anyone who’s paying attention can see that these people still have very real problems. Believing you can solve all your problems by being beautiful is what drove the incels crazy.

Rejection, recently released by Tony Tulathimutte, exemplifies this. A series of interlocked short stories all featuring the same theme, the first few (and best) stories follow: a cis white male feminist who uses his proximity to women as a weapon while his mind slowly curdles (“The Feminist” went incredibly viral a few years ago), and an overweight, mentally ill chronically online white woman (with a diverse friend group/group chat, natch) who slowly loses her mind when she’s rejected by a friend (situationships will ruin your life, I’ve always said this). 

The best story in the collection (“Ahegao, or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression”) features an overweight gay Asian man who’s absolutely furious at the lot he’s been dealt in life. Tellingly, he says he understands why men don’t want to have sex with him: 

“Anyway, it would be hypocritical to complain about it, as he, too, is only attracted to tall, muscular, white or black men and the occasional hung Latino: his complicity neutralizes his claim to oppression. But he feels excluded nonetheless, the more he browses, the more desperate he becomes, and the clearer the problem gets.”

In Rejection, the characters are all rigidly married to the social hierarchies that govern them: there is no talk of dismantling, of destroying, of overcoming. There is no body positivity or grace: The Feminist joins a forum dedicated to men with narrow shoulders, convinced his physiology is what’s preventing him from “having access” to women romantically, Kant (the protagonist of “Ahegao”) frankly discusses his chubbiness and includes his weight in the list of reasons he cannot get laid. As in The Substance, there’s no discussion or negotiation with the “rules” of the world: I am old, therefore I’m nothing, I’m overweight, therefore I’m nothing. Input, output.

“Ahegao” was especially interesting due to its pitch perfect depiction of gay dating. It’s hard to have a conversation about youth, bodies, fitness, and desirability without bringing up gay men, who have long worshiped at the altar of The Body. (Gay men even have their own version of an evil substance delivered via needle in steroids, or “gear”.) I posted about “The Feminist” two years ago on TikTok, warning gay men about the dangers of rigidly tying their self worth to their appearances. The discourse at the time involved the “unfairness” of Grindr and other hookup apps, with the claim that attractive people got more attention (obviously) and it was preventing other users from ever getting laid. 

A Bible verse for people obsessed with themselves.

Now, I hate that I have to say this, but… people other than tall, muscular, white men have sex. I promise you, they do. It’s asinine to criticize and compare oneself to the rippling bodies seen on Instagram, condemning yourself to a life of misery because you don’t look like Jacob Elordi. Growing up in New York, the old adage that there’s always someone younger, hotter, thinner, and richer than you (that devastates transplants when they start dating here) provides a peculiar security blanket. You can’t spend all your time comparing yourself to others because you’ll always find someone who has something you simply do not. It’s useless to try, and there’s freedom in that.

Does the gay community have the best track record when it comes to body positivity? Of course not. I can name a few actors being championed by the gay community simply because they’re hot, but that’s not my issue. Another message The Substance and Rejection have in common: jealousy will destroy you in the end.

(Anecdotally, I will also say that people will claim the bear community is body positive, which, sure. They’re also one of the most exclusionary groups of people I’ve ever met, and their version of “body positivity” is almost exclusively limited to white men with very specific body hair patterns. I’ve talked about the defensive crouch on here before: if you spend your life expecting other people to reject you because of the way you look, the buffer you’re creating can harden into a bitter shell. I’m not saying the bears are preemptively exclusionary because of the intensity of the gay male obsession with The Body but I’m not not saying it either.)

We hear stories of men getting leg extending surgery (to be a short man is a fate worse than death, they proclaim) and looksmaxxing, spending hours in the gym to become men they deem worthy of love. No offense, but I’ve seen the boyfriends of a lot of my straight girlfriends: you do not need to be a six foot tall muscle god to get a girlfriend! It feels urgent that they understand this, but they won’t. The scriptures that govern them are beyond sociological explanation, they’re a reification and oversimplification of ever-shifting beauty standards (I’d love to hear the incel explanation for why people are attracted to “Rat Boys”).

Incels find comfort in their rules because it creates a strange sense of freedom: there is absolution in absolutes. To completely relinquish all agency and accountability for one’s life and the role you play in shaping it is a temptation few can resist¹ (and in different veins, why we have people using mental health language to avoid accountability and the American obsession with victimization). 

I’m not saying the societal obsessions with youth, beauty, and thinness aren’t real: I’m simply saying if you succumb to the virulent messaging surrounding us, you’re allowing forces bigger than all of us to dictate how the rest of your life will play out. No one will be young forever. Not everyone will be beautiful forever. Isn’t it kinder to take solace in those facts instead of using them to punish yourself? The poison can come in the form of a needle, but it can also be a voice from within, telling you not to bother trying. The choice is yours. 

Neat Little Morality Slogans

• Author Allie Rowbottom linked this incredible review of The Substance by Emily Sundberg, which discusses the link between the movie and Aesthetica, my favorite book of 2023. Aesthetica is about an influencer reflecting on her life before getting a plastic surgery procedure to remove all her plastic surgery. I’m obsessed with the book and its frank discussion of beauty, privilege, surgery, the pressure to be perfect, wellness, purity, purification, and suffering. It is gorgeously written. Spoilers at the link, but a great read.

• Brendon Holder over at Loosey wrote beautifully about The Substance and desirability.

• The New York Times published an opinion piece about gay men and their muscles. I liked the thesis (the gay male gaze is creating the current obsession with celebrity abs and legs and traps and delts) but it was slightly long.

• TtB Book Club: We’re discussing Another Country IRL on Wednesday (RSVP link here) and online next week. Details at the link!

• Next week I’m going to do a round-up of assorted thoughts and maybe a little introduction? I was recently told I never talk about myself on here or TikTok, which surprised me. Watch this space…

1. Whenever I say this just picture me screaming BECAUSE NO ONE ADMITS ANYTHING THEY’VE DONE like Toni Collette in Hereditary. Americans have an accountability problem!