The star of “The Substance” today focuses on the hyper sexualization to which she was subjected in the 90s. And it’s impossible not to watch this lunar television sequence again with absolute unease.
In 1995, Demi Moore performed a strip tease live on TV (and the sequence is lunar)
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It’s lunar to see this again in 2024.
Here’s the lowdown: it’s 1995. Demi Moore is starring in a film that will (unfortunately) be considered the biggest misstep of her career: Strip Tease by Andrew Bergman. She rubbed shoulders with Burt Reynolds, Ving Rhames and Robert Patrick. But the real star is her, or rather what she represents: the biggest sex symbol of the 90s.
Because as you can guess, in the role of Erin Grant, Demi Moore plays in this film a single mother and stripper experiencing various adventures – intertwining “sexy” performances and a representative of the American Congress. However, the entire project, its origin, and its promotion, are based on this concept: Demi Moore as a stripper, at a time when she is doing a series of sulphurous scores – a very dubious and olé olé thriller. Harassment (where she sexually harasses Michael Douglas, yes yes) to the vague love triangle story Indecent proposal.
And how will Demi Moore present the film?
By going to the set of host David Letterman’s famous late show, an extremely popular show across the Atlantic, to discuss this project but above all… To perform a strip tease. Truly. In the middle of a TV show, under the clamor of the public…
You have to see the scene… And talk about it.
When Demi Moore performs a strip tease to the clamor of the public: 20 years later, the star testifies
To the fervor of David Letterman, and an enthusiastic audience, Demi Moore begins to perform… A real strip tease, wearing the same outfit as in the eponymous film, where she wears several, as part of the profession of his character. A sexy dance ensues.
A TV sequence straight out of Tex Avery.
While the star of The Substance today returns to her status as a sex symbol with bitterness and above all with a lot of perspective, she dedicates a much more critical look at this hyper sexualization to which she herself forced herself to in Hollywood.
This lunar scene is so symbolic to listen to.
This media moment, widely relayed on social networks today, is inseparable from the film it promotes: a super-sexualized star, scantily clad, observed from all sides by men who spy on her. It is a representation of the “male gaze”: this masculine gaze which places its own desires and fantasies on women and their supposed sexuality. A term that we decipher for you in this article.
Demi Moore seems here “forced” to deploy such an attitude, according to the expectations that an entire system places on her: her, the sex symbol, the sultry and free actress, who arouses desire. However, she also seems to appropriate this image to make it a strength.
That’s his opinion anyway…
“One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I loved my body“, Demi Moore will testify many years later. “In reality, I have often resorted to artistic projects which have given me the opportunity to overcome my complexes. It was the same for the covers of Vanity Fair where I posed naked: it wasn’t that I liked them, it was more an attempt to free myself from this mental prison in which I locked myself away.“.
“The other truth is that provocative things have always fascinated me. If we think about this film, Striptease, we understand that there is quite an interesting judgment made about this character of a woman who works as a dancer, while being a mother trying to take care of her child as best she could.“, deciphers the actress, who once again shared photos from Letterman’s show in 2015.
Almost ten years later, listening to him on the set of C à vous, this complex regarding his appearance is still apparently as strong. She says: She says: “As soon as I reached my forties, I felt like I was still too young to carry certain stories and on the one hand… Too old to be attractive. I was in the middle of nowhere, in no man’s land, and I didn’t know where I belonged“
His entire testimony can be found here. “When I wore a bikini for the movie Charlie’s Angels 2 20 years ago, I was criticized for no longer being the right age for the role“, explains the star. Here she discusses a sequence that we deciphered for you in this article.
But Demi Moore will also explain that this over-sexualization and this obsession with her appearance has done her a lot of harm. Psychologically, his entire career, and physically. Strip tease for example required a lot of physical training.
As well as another cult and very “cult” film, which she openly addresses in this Testimony to read here, and which she describes with these words: in order to embody a sexually free and desiring lover, she set herself leading to cycle 48 kilometers per day while filming this film.
“Does it matter that much to put in so much effort? Probably not. I thought my value was in the attraction I aroused. The idea of what I did to my body is so crazy, so ridiculous“, deplores the actress who puts all this relentlessness down to a “quest for beauty”…
