Haven’t seen this yet so I’m gonna talk about it. The majority of people Elisabeth/Sue talk to throughout the movie are men. Elisabeth talks to women 1) on the set of her job before she gets fired and 2) when a waitress asks for her order. Every influencing voice and relationship she has is men.
Her boss telling her she’s too old to be in the business anymore, the other substance user who turns her on to it, her old classmate from high school who she turns to for a last ditch grab at validating her self worth. Her dealer on the phone is also a male voice.
Underlying her deep rooted self hatred is a desperate grab for male validation. When she’s Sue, her boss will do anything to keep her on the show. Society even reinforces his decision to fire Elisabeth by rewarding him with higher ratings. The men around her are obsessed with her to a comical degree (the line read on “youre even more beautiful than before” is practically goofy) while in Elisabeth, they either ignore her or treat her with disdain, even going so far as to get unnecessarily violet (what even was that reaction from the motorcycle guy?)
But despite all of this, in BOTH bodies, she hardly speaks. Men talk at her, not to her. The majority of her lines are when she’s alone, to herself or to the voice on the phone. When decisions are made, it’s without her input. The biggest source of control she has is choosing to take the substance and how she uses it.
All of this really made the movie feel like, to me, a depiction of the gruesome things women do to themselves in an attempt to chase male approval, whether or not they realize that male validation is the thing they are chasing. Elisabeth was chasing an impossible beauty standard that she herself spent her life perpetuating, and it was men at the top deciding what that beauty standard was.
It felt like a reflection of the countless arguments I’ve seen across many a social platform- “I wear makeup every day because /I/ want to” “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my nose shape, I just don’t like how it looks on /my/ face” - but who taught you these things? what put those ideas in your mind in the first place? Who was influencing the person who was influencing you?
Because yes, it was Elisabeth’s decision to take the substance. But would she have taken it at all if she wasn’t a part of the hollywood beauty industry- one that specifically focuses on what women’s bodies are “supposed” to look like?