Clerval: I haven't read the
Twilight books and don't plan to, but I have read a fair few commentaries and reviews (because they tend to be hilarious.) Does Bella really fit here? It's plain that it goes on and on and on about how beautiful
Edward is, and that Bella is extremely beautiful yet
unaware of it, and I know that she has a lot people falling in love with her. But is her beauty ever presented as an actual problem?
Hokuto: Bella was never actually described as even pretty until her transformation in Breaking Dawn, and even then it wasn't presented as a bad thing. Removing the entry.
- But surely some one with 4 boys after her must have something going for them.
Kizor: I'm not going to contest this trope's awfulness, but I've seen pretty female slaves not being asked a by-your-leave in
Mistborn and Orson Scott Card's
Alvin Maker series, and the article mentions the same in
The Ten Commandments. What're your opinions on that variation?
Ethereal Mutation: Contested entry moved here for repair.
- Evangeline Lilly from Lost is always whining about how her beauty is such a burden, how she'd cry herself to sleep and wish she was ugly when she was younger because men wouldn't leave her alone, how she covers up the mirrors because she's so tired of looking at her oh so beautiful self, etc. Either she's got an ego the size of Jupiter, or one very bizarre manifestation of low self-esteem.
- This troper would suspect low self-esteem, given that a close friend (a stunningly gorgeous blonde flight attendant) has similar issues. She's careful not to complain, but she's quite lonely as a result of people feeling intimidated, hounding her for sex or faulting her career choice. She's also grown to hate mirrors and photographs because they don't represent the "real" person she wishes people would see instead.
- With regards Ms. Lilly, it's a bit hard to take the "low self-esteem" view seriously when you consider that, with one breath, she complains about her horrific career stifling curse, and then promptly appears in sexy photoshoots wearing skimpy lingerie and bikinis. Mixed messages much?
- Not necessarily. It's not uncommon for models to have self-esteem or insecurity issues, since they're often treated as a commodity during their formative years. If you grow up thinking your looks are the only thing of value about you, that's what you use. So a bikini shoot does not automatically equal good self-esteem.
- We aren't talking about self esteem in this second point. It's hard to take her seriously if she complains about how her beauty is such a curse and her career isn't so great because men only think of her as a sex object, and then in the next move she strips off for a photo shoot. If she thought her beauty was such a curse, she wouldn't exploit for magazines, whatever her self esteem.
Grimace: Fair enough - was a bit of a natterfest(I'm the whiney chap who made the first jab about Ms Lilly's "career stifling curse"). My point basically was summed up nicely by that last troper - I'm fully aware, as the replying troper rightly pointed out, how sexism and judging people based soley on their looks is a problem and no doubt quite demeaning, but I just get fed up with people like Ms Lilly (who
is quite pretty) who piss and moan about people judging them for their looks, only to happily milk it for all its worth for their continued fame and fortune. That's not what I'd consider a "curse", and if I did I'd stop using it. Plus I kind of find the height of arrogance needed to say it in the first place irking, but that's more a Hollywood/Acting problem more than Ms. Lilly specifically.
[/needless, whiney rant]
