It is a con women know well, yet it is important to recognise that men can also be its victims

There is one scene in Demi Moore’s new film, The Substance, that made the actor cry, and it’s a scene about self-loathing. Getting ready for a date, her character looks in the mirror and is driven to violent despair. Nothing she tries looks right; everything about her suddenly seems wrong.

Moore, who plays a TV star driven to extreme measures after being fired for getting older, has said the film is about the shame women are conditioned to feel about their bodies and the punishment we are conned into inflicting on ourselves as a result, from expensive miracle creams we know won’t really work right up to the plastic surgeon’s knife. Swap the older woman in the film for a teenage girl, starving herself because she doesn’t meet some impossible physical ideal, and the message rings just as true. But what if you swapped her for a teenage boy?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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