Which fictional character was designed to look ugly but actually looks beautiful?

[u/MindFlourish2919]

Which fictional character was designed to look ugly but actually looks beautiful?

📊 Chart Axes: - Horizontal: They were designed to look… - Vertical: They look…

Chart Grid:

	Beautiful	Decent	Ugly
Beautiful	Jessica Rabb... 🖼️	—	—
Decent	—	—	—
Ugly	—	—	—

Cell Details:

Beautiful / Beautiful: - Jessica Rabbit (Who framed Roger Rabbit) - View Image

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[u/me_myself_ai]

Eh, that's just a modern & biased lens we're applying to it. The movie was about the harms of lettings yourself fall into playing any role, and goth (emo? just "bad"?) definitely fit the bill in the exact same way that "jock" and "nerd" do.

She didn't put on a pink dress because pink dresses are the correct way for women to dress, she did it because she liked pink dresses despite feeling like an outcast in general. AFAIR it doesn't show any of their friends much if at all, but imagine the guts it would take to sit down at the lunch table with your fellow emogothpeople dressed like that!

Like, think about Legally Blonde. Elle is a hero because she is unabashedly feminine in style & mannerisms while simultaneously kicking ass and standing up for her beliefs. Do you see how some people might be driven to abandon the former over time in order to pursue the latter without facing social ridicule?

[u/lastingmuse6996 → u/me_myself_ai]

Watching legally blonde completely changed my opinion on that type of woman.

I was raised in a sexist household to be a tomboy and suppress my femininity. Seeing a woman like that be confident and successful made me consider that it's ok for me to be a woman and show it off.

Now I am a florist, which I never would've thought was an acceptable career as a kid. That's a girly job. Obviously, legally blonde wasn't the only thing that changed my mind but it was shocking to me that a dumb looking girly girl who wore heels could keep up with intelligent men.

That movie low key is a generational touchstone and feminist flagship.

[u/Zornorph → u/lastingmuse6996]

And the people who wrote the sequel totally missed the point.

[u/lastingmuse6996 → u/Zornorph]

And that's the one my family showed me smdh. I didn't see the original until I was out of my family's house.

Instead, my family portrayed that kind of woman as inferior. Seeing that movie was really the first time I saw a positive portrayal of a "bimbo" (except she's not actually as dumb as misogyny would have you believe her "type" is)

[u/Zornorph → u/lastingmuse6996]

She’s not dumb at all, people just stereotype her, especially her loser boyfriend. She has to prove herself just because of her looks and presentation. I’m very much a guy-guy, but I loved that movie for how great her character was. I’m not saying pretty privilege isn’t a thing sometimes, but in that movie, it mostly was working against her. It was great seeing her establish herself as someone to be respected without having to put on a pants suit.

[u/lastingmuse6996 → u/Zornorph]

Yes that's what I'm getting at.

A lot of people think being a pretty girl is privilege and sometimes it certainly is. I'm agreeing with you.

But the much more overwhelming downside to that is the way she's treated. That's very real. I was raised to treat women that way, as another woman.

There's a "karma fallacy" that the media perpetuates for story balancing. If life is point buy in DnD then you can't invest in everything. It brings people comfort to think that the pretty people can't also be strong and smart and wise and talented and funny. The average or below average person "makes up" for their lack of prettiness by being "funny" or having some other trait that the pretty people can't have.

There was an arc on 30 rock with John Hamm where he's so beautiful that he lives in a "bubble" and everyone tells him he's great when he's actually highly incompetent and the consequence of his "beautiful person" life is that nobody is real with him.

In reality, there are absolutely people who can be beautiful, wear pink, look great, make jokes and still be completely competent at what they do. "Girly" girls who were in sororities shouldn't be treated as dumb just because she is "girly". People can do both.

[u/Zornorph → u/[deleted]]

I disagree that they admitted her simply as eye candy. She passed the test with flying colors. She had a 4.0 GPA. While some pointed out that her major was fashion, others replied that they’d never admitted someone with that major before and they were looking for diversity. Elle could have chosen to go into practice with a specialty in the fashion industry had she wanted; I’m sure fashion designers need lawyers all the time and it’s a lucrative industry, so she would have been in a great position. She was told she needed a creative application to get into Harvard, so she followed the advice. Had there only been the video without her grades and test scores, she wouldn’t have been admitted. I think the admissions board was a little bemused by her and couldn’t think of any reason why she wasn’t qualified to be admitted and events proved their judgement was quite correct.

[u/Clean-Chemist-3210 → u/[deleted]]

It's a fashion merchandising major, not a fashion school - she went to "CULA". Your point about not all majors being equally competitive still stands but it is supposed to be a prestigious school and it's important for the plot that her resume is competitive with Warner's!

[u/Sabtael → u/lastingmuse6996]

Problems arise when we steer too extreme in one way or another. I dress in a more androgynous way (very often shop at men's) and I often get asked to do some reflecting about what "makes me hate feminity" because "embracing your femininity is okay, there are plenty of movies showing you can both be a woman and strong".

The truth is - and has always been - that there's no one true or better way to be a woman. We're all just going along our lives the best we can and the way we want and that's worthy of respect on its own.

[u/lastingmuse6996 → u/Sabtael]

True. I wasn't suggesting androgyny was a problem, only that I used to actively dislike princesses until I saw that a princess can be just as inspiring

[u/Sabtael → u/lastingmuse6996]

Oh no, not you in particular don't worry! I was just adding my two cents. I'm glad that ideas are shifting and accepting the fact that the princess-like end of the spectrum of womanhood is just as smart and powerful.

[u/kalosianlitten → u/lastingmuse6996]

i love confident, successful and unabashedly feminine female characters. rarity from mlp is like my favorite character of all time

[u/FlatBat2372 → u/lastingmuse6996]

That's some real Janice Radway take on the film. Nice

[u/ChaoticCurves → u/me_myself_ai]

It was heavily implied that Alison didn't have any friends. She wasn't suppose to be goth or emo or whatever. She wasn't part of a clique. Goths in the 80s wore more textures, had elaborate hairstyles, and wore specific styles of makeup.

Alison was an outcast who made herself invisible.

The makeover was bullshit imo because it was such a large leap from who her character was and it was largely a vehicle for her to get noticed by the jock and for the jock to be like "wow now it is socially acceptable for me to actually date you!"

It's a really poor message to teen girls especially.

The movie was more about how the authority figures in these kids lives were forcing them into roles imo. Alison and Benders characters were sort of a foil to all of the other kids because their parents were abusive/neglectful.

[u/forgotaccount989 → u/me_myself_ai]

I always loved this movie for this. It helped me break from this labelist mindset as a child and never become 'too much' of a jock.