The Movies Guiding Me Through Menopause – 2024 Edition
The Movies Guiding Me Through Menopause – 2024 Edition.
A Critical Essay on Babygirl, The Last Showgirl, and The Substance
For women of the Gen X culture, we have found the glass ceiling isn’t glass. It’s concrete. So instead of shattering it, we have found ways, like water, to ooze through the cracks and create career and life successes tailored to us. We have found ways to become CEO’s, celebrities, and oracles with our own paths and our own goalposts. And that has created a culture where, in some spaces, it seems we are equal. But, as we all know, we are not. And even in the worlds where some have carved a place at the very top of male-dominated fields, relating to a woman’s journey to that pinnacle requires being a woman who has journeyed there. Not a man who has journeyed to the same space. Not a woman who has chosen a different path. Being a successful woman in a man’s world is a lonely place.
Now try to find a Hollywood writer who knows that journey enough to tell that story.
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Thank the movie-making gods that not all writers come from the Hollywood machine anymore. And that leads me to my latest obsession movie (movie I’m obsessed with and a movie about obsession): Babygirl. And while I’m ruminating on this film, I’m also thinking about two other films I watched this month: The Last Showgirl and The Substance. Likely not a coincidence that the last three films I’ve watched are about women my age who succeeded in worlds created by men and struggle through their relationship to that success.
All three films don’t ever mention menopause, but I watched with menopause in mind. And I gotta say, if you know, you know. If you don’t, it’s still a good trio of movies but a few tense moments may not have the same gut punch of relatability.
Like most of 2024, multiple movies with well-lit close-ups on beautiful women over 50 was not on my bingo card. I’m used to women over 50 disappearing from view. We are the invisible age. So it’s a milestone to see The Substance, The Last Showgirl, and Babygirl star the most stunning women of Gen X culture. And I watched each of them give a hard look at their utterly perfect reflections in each film. The Last Showgirl is arguably a full movie of Pamela Anderson reacting to her own image and I could write dissertations on how casting her in that film was the most gracious gift to my generation one could imagine. That was closure for my body insecurities in my youth.
Let’s Talk Genre
All three films have women of a certain age who have lived through the 80s and 90s in a culture far from what women experience now. And I think the genre and style of these films were very intentional. No. They were the only option for the stories they were telling. Fringe genres for an audience on the fringe. Nicole Kidman is a CEO who had to climb a ladder dirty with sexism and sexual assault. It’s mentioned in the film, but I think my generation can easily add that layer without it. How else can the nuance of being immersed in a cut-throat man’s world be portrayed except in the erotic thriller? Demi Moore is a woman who shot to TV fame with her looks and blind drive, and that can only be realistically dealt with in the body horror genre as her body, no matter how well maintained, has betrayed her and she is cast aside. And Pamela Anderson is a woman who chose to be a showgirl over a mother and over a “normal” career. The price she pays for doing what she loves can only exist in a character study like The Last Showgirl because there is no ending to the curse of aging in a world that relies on youth.
As a woman just a few years younger than Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson and Nicole Kidman, these specific women have stayed 22 in my brain. And in many ways, whenever I see them, I become a teenager again, finding my identity through their characters. I watched each film thinking about these women in the age of hot flashes and mood swings after decades seeing them as quintessential feminine youth and unattainable hotness. It’s a complex jumble of emotions, thinking of them decades ago while also seeing them beautifully, brilliantly become women of a crone’s age with so much more realism and relatability than any other older female character we have seen up to now.
Also, these films present not just “women of a certain age,” but women who embody the evolving ideals of beauty and agency. Films like these aren’t just entertainment—they’re cultural touchstones for women navigating the intersections of beauty, age, power, and hot flashes. Babygirl in particular feels (ugh, dare I say this?) revolutionary, not because it brings us another solid addition to the evolving genre but because it deepens it, asking questions about how we wield sexual power as we age and how that power intersects with the larger cultural power dynamics around us. And how losing all self-control doesn’t take away from that power. Or does it?
Erotica, Horror and Character Study – Underrated Art Forms
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these three films are in genres least respected in cinema.
The character study is often seen as meandering and self-indulgent in America. I still see the style in global dramas but America simply lacks the attention span. Sorry, haters. With that said, The Last Showgirl is riveting. Why? Because it reflects reality. It’s a fictional documentary about how we abandon pretty young women even though they become stunning matriarchs, flawed, emotionally scarred matriarchs.
In parallel, erotica and horror are too often dismissed as cheap thrills. But both genres have always made controversial statements about society and politics. Even before cinema, French erotica contained the most profound philosophical discussions woven in with the whips and chains. Sex is a perfect metaphor for power. Body horror is a perfect metaphor for body autonomy. Both genres tickle our brains in such a way to make us open to unearthing our insecurities and confronting the unspeakable. We want what we find taboo (power). We fear our own selves and those labeled as safe (horror).
Babygirl lays bare its characters’ emotional and physical vulnerabilities, and in doing so, it creates space for us to confront our vulnerabilities. Our desire to abandon what we build for something new and exciting. Uncomfortable. Sometimes offensive. Often arousing. What would we do if we were her? If we had everything except one burning desire, how much would we risk for it? And will we be aware of how the consequences could ripple so far outside of our own small world?
For women of my generation, erotica has long held a unique place in shaping our understanding of power and sexuality. I found my sexuality with 9½ Weeks, a film that influenced my own desires and sexual boundaries. I certainly can’t look at my refrigerator normally for the last 38 years (yes, I pulled out a calculator to confirm). The story of a successful woman who succumbs to the dominating allure of a man felt intoxicating, but it really struck my feminist nerve. Is erotic submission un-feminist? Babygirl asks the same feminism question with a 2024 eye. What happens when women play the same corporate-sexual mind games from the place of power? What does desire look like when it’s wielded with both agency and the scars of lived experience? With power, are we as bad as men? Or will that power never be ours?
Generational Observations
For me, the most poignant aspect of all three films is the subtle exploration of generational differences. Romy’s interactions with her assistant Esme in Babygirl, Shelly’s relationship with the young women she dances with in The Last Showgirl, and the twisted relationship between Elisabeth and Sue in The Substance are all striking relationships of embrace and repulsion. We crones are frustrated momma bears with our young counterparts. And some of it is because of our own stubborn hold on the trauma that forged us. Some of it is a fierce desire to protect and continue to pave the way for women starting out in a different but still cruel world. I hope women my age check out these films to see ourselves laid bare. I hope young women see these films as a peek into our own psyche and a future they can continue to forge with their fears and visions.