The popular Bravo fan account @yolanda_parody wrote in a recent tweet, “Heather Gay would probably take the substance.” For the uninitiated, the post refers to the body-horror film The Substance, starring Demi Moore as an aerobics instructor who injects herself with an elixir that will not just make her appear more youthful, but become younger—in the form of Margaret Qualley. It’s a joke, of course, and it’s certainly not a compliment.
Real Housewives like Salt Lake City standout Gay sign onto the franchise knowing full well they’ll be sharing their lives. Their personalities and behavior—for better and, more often, for worse—become our entertainment. But should their physical appearances be fodder as well? Digs like the @yolanda_parody post are on the tame side; these women receive the full spectrum of insults about their looks. They’ve been called names like Shrek and Miss Piggy—on camera! by their costars!—so you can only imagine what’s been hurled at them from behind the protection of DMs.
Look, I’m not here to be all, like, uncool and monitor your group chats. First of all, doing so would make me a massive hypocrite. The second-season glow-up is real, and I’m not a good enough actor to pretend not to notice. But I am here to say that I think we—as a fandom, an audience, and a culture—need to stop seeking physical perfection from women, then expecting them to lay out every detail of the choices they make in order to reach that standard.
Like many Housewives before her, Gay made some changes to her appearance between seasons. She told People she was “on the Ozempic train” and returned in season five, airing now, with a new, thinner look. But Gay’s honesty only went so far with fans, who suspected she did more than simply lose a few pounds. They started theorizing what else she may or may not have done to her face and body that she wasn’t saying out loud (hence The Substance post).
Gay has historically been open about the tools she’s used to physically morph herself to fit a certain image. “I get Botox, filler in my lips. I get Sculptra, which is like a collagen stimulator,” she told Page Six in 2022. A self-proclaimed “bad Mormon,” she co-owns a Utah med-spa, Beauty Lab + Laser, serving locals who seek one thing: perfection. “The Mormon culture believes that we can be perfect. Perfection is obtainable,” she proclaims in the very first episode of RHOSLC. Mormonism may be an alleged driving force for the ladies of Salt Lake, but youth and beauty is the ultimate goal for the ‘wives across cities.