The Ugly Stepsister: Beauty is Pain, Beauty is Suffering
We all know the classic tale of Cinderella: a poor, young orphan enslaved by her stepmother, who marries a Prince after a ball where she loses her glass slipper. Cinderella can be considered one of, if not the most famous, fairy tales of all time. The classic Grimm Brothers’ Cinderella story has been adapted into numerous versions over the years. Cinderella’s story provides a glimpse into womanhood, revealing that the fight for equality can sometimes be subtle rather than loud. The Ugly Stepsister (2024) provides another perspective on Cinderella’s story. The film centers Cinderella’s rival for the Prince's affections, her stepsister Elvira, whose plan to win the Prince’s love ultimately falters due to her obsession with perfection. The themes explored in The Ugly Stepsister relate to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Good Health and Wellbeing and Gender Equality.
The tale's trajectory is foreshadowed by a camera pan of a dinner table. On the table we see a combination of expensive fruits, bread and imported meals like beef and pasta with maggots, earthworms and a long, ribbonlike feature that reveals to be a long tapeworm. The dinner table is decorated elegantly with moldy fruit and dying flowers, similarly to how in the end, the decaying Elvira is decorated by wigs and a beautiful dress. Similarly to European still life portraits from Francisco Goya and Abraham Mignon, paintings that appear beautiful from afar always contain more than meets the eye. The worms blending into the food mirror the ways Goya’s mold and decay blends into the painting, while the contrast of the tapeworm sprawled across the table mirrors Mignon’s bugs becoming one with the artwork. The shot indirectly foreshadows the trajectory of the three female protagonists in their pursuit of perfection, wealth and safety.
In The Ugly Stepsister (2024), we are given a glimpse of the different ways women in the 19th century pursued the forms of beauty through gruesome methodologies that bordered on self-harm, often ignorant of their negative side effects. Beauty, in the experience of Elvira, the ‘ugly stepsister’, is full of endless suffering when compared to her ‘cinderella’, Agnes, and her effortless perfection. The film presents the audience with a realistic portrayal of the struggles associated with pursuing perfection, as well as the subtle ways women acquired power and agency in 19th-century Europe. Extreme body modifications have existed in many cultures throughout history, including practices such as neck elongation, lip plates, and even foot binding. Aesthetic plastic surgeries were also present in the 19th century, using analgesia and tissue manipulation to perform surgeries with experimental techniques on ‘clients’ and/or ‘colleagues’ rather than ‘patients’ to avoid being sued for malpractice.
In the film, Elvira does everything to become beautiful. This includes getting a ‘rhinoplasty’ (brutally having her nose hacked off with an icepick), permanent eyelash extensions (getting false eyelashes sewn into her eyelids) and even a new ‘diet' (swallowing a tapeworm egg) to become beautiful. But why?
We can interpret Elvira’s pursuit of perfection as a reflection of her desire to be loved and accepted. Rebekka is extremely hard on Elvira, seeing her as her useless, ugly daughter who needs to be fixed. Rebekka only shows love when Elvira has succeeded in becoming beautiful, and even then, she is still quite harsh. However, Elvira is not ugly. Elvira is just average.
According to Elvira’s trajectory in The Ugly Stepsister, the worst thing you can do in this life is to not stand out. Elvira’s averageness is the reason she is perceived as ugly, even though many audiences feel that she was never ugly to begin with. Her dance tutor, Madame Vanja, states she has “wasted talent” due to her appearance. Elvira’s journey to acceptance is full of struggles and sacrifice as she battles Agnes for the Prince’s affection. Elvira does everything from pushing her body to its limit to pushing Agnes away from the competition by revealing her relationship with Isak, the stable hand. Elvira’s metaphorical hunger for success, combined with her literal hunger from her tapeworm, drives her into madness. She does not win the Prince in the end, because her unnatural beauty and performative charisma fail to charm her target. In her last attempt to gain the Prince’s favour, she attempts to fit into Agnes’ shoes, thinking that if the shoe fits, she can fit as his true love.
Emilie Blichtfeld, in an interview with Script Magazine, states that Elvira’s ugliness isn't due to her appearance but due to her actions.
“I wanted her to become the evil, ugly stepsister at the end. Ugly in the sense of how she carries out her actions, but also for the audience to understand why that’s a true archetype.”
Blichtfeld states in the interview that there are no true heroes or villains in her film, but rather archetypes that reveal the ugly side of us all, brewing and waiting to emerge.
All the women serve as archetypes, including Elvira’s family, who in turn also exemplify the violence of the male gaze. Horror films often showcase the violent realities of womanhood under the male gaze, and The Ugly Stepsister is a masterclass in showcasing the effects of patriarchal control. Agnes serves as the antithesis to Elvira as the cinderella archetype who marries the Prince because of her beauty. Rebekka's mother serves as the overbearing type, always wanting her daughters to be the best. Alma, her sister, serves as the yet-to-be-ripe fruit that excites men because of her potential. Like Elvira’s fantasies about the prince, there is a stark difference between the Prince when viewed through the female gaze and the male gaze. In her fantasies, the Prince is a kind young gentleman who will love and accept her wholeheartedly, based on his poetry. In reality, when Elvira meets him by accident while he urinates in public, he laughs about how he prefers his women ‘sexually experienced’ because breaking in a virgin is a hassle. The ‘real’ Prince views women as an object first rather than a person, while the imaginary Prince sees Elvira as a human first before she is a woman.
When you are born a woman, you are seen as an object first and human second. The concept of purity and virginity reflects upon their value as ‘objects of male desire’ rather than their personhood. We know little about Agnes’ interests but know that Agnes’s ‘promiscuity’, because of her love for Isak, demotes her from her Noble status to a simple servant. Her only vice is to turn to the Prince to save her from her suffering. We know nothing about Rebekka’s past struggles with her marriages, but Rebekka’s ‘black widow’ approach to marriage makes men disrespect her as a woman, as she is reduced to a toy for sexual experience. We know little about Alma, except that Alma’s youth excites men.
Agnes and Rebekka are similar in that they have limited rights due to the absence of a male presence in their lives. Women in the 19th century did not have the right to vote, own property, or have an education, which means Agnes’ father’s death does not necessarily give her the agency to freedom. She must marry a nobleman to maintain her ownership of her land and property. Rebekka arguably has more rights to her apparent fortune than Agnes does, being entitled to at least one-third of her late husband’s estate. However, Rebekka faces the challenge of accidentally inheriting his poverty. Rebekka’s value as a woman is tied to her youth, and as her youth fades, she has no other way to gain income after her husband’s death. Widowers in the 19th century often faced difficulties in earning a living, despite being in high demand due to their experience and freedom from guardianship. Rebekka, with no other way to earn money, has to settle for becoming the object of the wealthy man’s desire, letting them use her so she can earn a bit of stability through his gifts.
Alma, however, is different. Alma is objectified in the sense that she is seen as more beautiful than her sister. However, her prepubescent nature allows her protection. It is horrifying to think that the men around her are waiting for her to come of age, which is exemplified in one of the more tame scenes in the film depicting Alma’s first experience with her period. We see her life flash before her eyes as she keeps her puberty a secret from her sister while her sister openly speaks about her desire to finally be desired by men. It is due to her protection and witnessing everything that happened to her sisters and her mother that she becomes the hero of the story, saving her sister from further harm as a result of her pursuit of perfection.
Blichtfeldt reflects upon Alma as a character, wanting her to be the one who discovers the truth behind the archetype. Blichtfeldt states that “Comparing yourself to others can make you feel so insecure and also not see the other people for what they are because you just compare yourself to the things you want to see.” Alma becomes the hero of the story after noticing how much her sister went through just for her to fall onto her face, both literally and metaphorically, as the prince chooses Agnes in the end.
The Ugly Stepsister is a subversion of the classic fairytale genre, introducing a more realistic portrayal of humanity's carnal nature. The film is filled with rich yet horrifying visuals of the reality of beauty. The four heroines’s stories reflect reality as Emilie Blichtfelt guides the audience through women's lives in the 19th century and how the pursuit of perfection can be deadly. Like the old French saying, il faut souffrir pour être belle, “one must suffer to become beautiful.”