The real reason why Demi Moore’s Golden Globes speech is going viral

The actress has gone viral after delivering the most powerful speech at this year’s Golden Globes, writes Olivia Petter. Her words served as a stark reminder of the pressures women face in the industry and beyond

Women aren’t allowed to age. It’s a message that has been with us since birth: stay young, stay hot. And do it quietly, please. However you go about it doesn’t matter, so long as you find a way. If you don’t, your social and economic currency will dwindle.

Nobody knows this better than a film actress, specifically Demi Moore, whose Golden Globe acceptance speech serves as a stark reminder of the damaging nature of contemporary beauty standards and how women are treated in Hollywood.

In case you missed it: the 62-year-old won Best Actress at Sunday night’s ceremony for her turn in The Substance, the critically acclaimed body horror film in which a renowned aerobics star is fired on her 50th birthday, leading her to take a mysterious substance that promises to transform her into an enhanced (read: younger) self. That self soon appears in the form of Margaret Qualley and let’s just say things get grotesque from there.

As Qualley’s character, Sue, becomes more buoyant and successful, stepping in to revamp the aerobics show, Moore’s character, Elizabeth Sparkle, ages more visibly and violently until she’s more monstrous than she is human.

The message of the film is that a woman’s value is transient. The older she gets, the more irrelevant and inconvenient she becomes: a problem nobody wants to see or solve. It’s a sentiment we see being reinforced everywhere, from advertising to social media. And it’s one all of us can relate to, regardless of whether we’re actresses or accountants. This of course includes Moore herself.

“Thirty years ago I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time I made that mean that this wasn’t something I was allowed to have,” the actress began, revealing that this is the first award she’s won for acting. “That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I had done what I was supposed to do. And as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me that ‘you’re not done.’”

Moore went on to summarise the film’s imparting wisdom: “I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’ So today I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me, and the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong.”

‘Thirty years ago I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress,’ said Moore (AFP via Getty)

The speech packed a punch, so much so that Kerry Washington wished the next winner luck before presenting the following award. Yes, its power was partly in the way Moore related deeply to her character. But it was mostly the fact that her experiences nearly drove her out of the industry altogether. It’s astonishing to think that someone as talented, established, and conventionally attractive as Moore can be made to feel like an outsider whose artistic contributions should be limited to her younger years.

Surely there’s no worse indictment of Hollywood’s treatment of women than that.

Moore has been widely praised for her words, with social media users dubbing it the best speech of the night. This might be true. But it’s disappointing they needed to be said at all. This is 2025; if we’re still making women feel as if they need to look or act a certain way in order to have any kind of worth, where does that leave us?

As Moore said, it’s time to put down the measuring stick. But that’s an instruction that’s easier said than done. Because in order for women to do that, we need to feel like it’s safe to do so. That we will be able to age freely and gracefully without fearing that doing so will limit our opportunities in the workplace and beyond. The sad truth is we’re not there yet. Because if we were, well, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.