TAPEWORMS AND MAGGOTS IN THE UGLY STEPSISTER

 

A biological Chekhov's Gun, slowly growing inside of her, helping her to lose weight.

Worms, in The Ugly Stepsister (Norwegian dark retelling of Cinderella), symbolize unrealistic beauty standards and the pains to achieve them. Elvira (STEPSISTER protagonist) swallows a tapeworm egg to lose weight at the expense of her own health such as extreme hunger pains and balding. As Elvira consumes spaghetti, invoking the consumption of worms, she forces her more beautiful stepsister Agnes (Cinderella) whose also her rival for Prince Julian's hand in marriage, to bathe her and read Prince Julian's poetry to her. Agnes retaliates by pointing out Elvira's balding head. Meanwhile this is juxtaposed with Otto's (Agnes' dead father's) corpse as maggots consume his decaying body. Four of those maggots become silkworms as they repair Agnes's ball gown that Elvira destroyed in a fit of jealousy. Agnes wears the repaired gown at the ball, and Prince Julian falls in love with her at first sight just moments after falling in love with Elvira. Elvira has a mental breakdown and hallucinates maggots crawling all over the food female dancers. She runs off and throws up tapeworm eggs. At the end of the film, her younger sister Alma removes the tapeworm from Elvira, symbolizing her freedom from such impossible beauty standards.

Because Otto was never buried, we watch his corpse slowly decay. At first his body is in good condition. Then we see it covered in flies. This understandably scares his daughter Agnes. Then we see maggots swarming and crawling out of every orifice on his face. Finally, the Post-Credits Scene shows his corpse mummified and covered in spiderwebs.

Madame Wandzia comforts Elvira that she is very brave for changing her outward appearance to match her inner beauty, the first real compliment Elvira has ever received. It quickly becomes Unnervingly Heartwarming when Madame Wandzia gifts Elvira a tapeworm egg to swallow to help her lose weight. This goes to highlight how even the kind and genuinely well-intentioned characters in this story can still be just as toxic as the very regime

Crossing over with Nausea Fuel, Elvira has a mental breakdown after the Prince leaves her for another beautiful woman (Agnes). As she spins and twirls, she hallucinates maggots covering the tables of food and the ladies at the ball. This culminates in her rushing off and vomiting tapeworm eggs as she cries to her unsympathetic mother that she's dying.

Alma pulls a fully grown tapeworm out of Elvira's mouth. It's the first step to Elvira's recovery, but it's still unnerving and disgusting to watch.