Not Tropeworthy: Hot Mom

You know, Amy's got a good point. What if instead of making a trope for the subversion, we just make a Haggard Mother trope.

Stacy's Mom has it covered by having at least one much-younger character attracted to them. Not by having a similarly-aged character attracted to them.

Why not both tropes? We still need to increase the evidence for Hot Dad.

edited 19th Sep '13 3:03:17 PM by crazysamaritan

I have questions whether playing the Real Life expectation straight just like so is a trope at all. And I do not see how it could help fixing this thing.

By Haggard do you mean ugly mom or plain mom?

I just want to drop a note that I'm very much against merge of cut.

I propose deleting bad write-ups from the page and any odd wicks. The description should state requirements — if we need in-universe reference or lampshade hanging, or if "stunned" reactions shown visually are enough... things like that.

I agree with KJ Mackley. A character who has just had a baby and is young is not Hot Mum or Hot Dad, but people keep shoehorning it.

Then what requirements, aside from Audience Reaction, do we need to make for Hot Mom+Hot Dad?

There is no Audience Reaction component to those tropes.

How about the character is a parent who isn't unusually young to be a parent and is portrayed as attractive (Fanservice Tropes, Beauty Tropes, or other characters outside their immediate family, find them them attractive)?

edited 19th Sep '13 4:54:34 PM by captainpat

The misuse is Audience Reaction. That's why we have to come up with rules on restricting examples.

I just gave some.

edited 19th Sep '13 5:27:28 PM by captainpat

I'm still not getting a sense of what "Portrayed as attractive" is really supposed to mean, and why it is important.

Is a single mother that has men within the story trying to date her a Hot Mom? Is a married mother whose husband still thinks she is beautiful a Hot Mom?

I also don't get why it is supposed to be important. People are talking like Real Life mothers are all hags or something. And even if they were, I'm sure some people find hags "hot", which is a rather subjective term.

Yes, to the first question, probably no to second one.

I'm not sure what else to say. If a work uses fanservice tropes, or beauty tropes for the portrayal of a specific character that usually means the work is pointing out that specific character as attractive. Same deal if other characters start remarking on their attractiveness. This page already has a ton examples that do just that.

edited 19th Sep '13 6:33:29 PM by captainpat

Okay, let's say the work points out that a character is attractive. So what? What does that mean? Is she a Single Mom Looking For Love? (Great - but she would be whether she's hot or not.) Is she Stacy's Mom? (Fine, but put her on that page.) Is she Ms. Fanservice? (Okay, but what does that have to do with her being a mother?) It just adds up to "hot" and "mom." There's no trope by which moms are hotter than other character types.

Could you give me a good example of Hot Mom?

Sure, I'll give you one.

• On Gilmore Girls, Lorelai is very attractive and had her daughter Rory when she was sixteen. In the pilot episode, a guy hits on her and moments later he hits on Rory, and is extremely surprised to find out they are mother and daughter. Lorelai is also constantly hit on by students at Yale who assume she's their peer or just slightly older. Rory complains that it's hard fr her to have such attractive parents, because her father gets hit on as well.

Lorelai is not Ms. Fanservice because she doesn't run around in skimpy clothes. Nor is she Stacy's Mom because there is no teenage boy who admits having fantasies about her.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:04:04 PM by XFllo

Sheldon Cooper's mom Mary from The Big Bang Theory. It's not just her physical appearance but also her very warm demeanor. Her first appearance had her flirting with Sheldon's boss, which supports how she is meant to be an attractive older lady. In contrast Leonard's mom Beverly is icy cold and always wears rather dowdy professional attire, where despite being attractive in her own right she is not meant to be seen as appealing in that way.

In essence this is one of those tropes where you have to feel out an example via their characterization and interactions with others. It isn't something that is always immediately evident from the first moment you see them.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:13:23 PM by KJMackley

Sounds good. It's based on her characterization and interactions with others just like all the other Attraction Tropes. What's the problem with this?

On Gilmore Girls, Lorelai is very attractive and had her daughter Rory when she was sixteen.

That's just Teen Pregnancy, not a distinct trope.

In the pilot episode, a guy hits on her and moments later he hits on Rory, and is extremely surprised to find out they are mother and daughter.

Just a mild version of Absurdly Youthful Mother, not a distinct trope.

Lorelai is also constantly hit on by students at Yale who assume she's their peer or just slightly older. Rory complains that it's hard fr her to have such attractive parents, because her father gets hit on as well.

That is Older Than They Look plus Offspring Embarrassed By Parents Being Sexual People, which might be a trope worth writing, but is a lot more specific and complex than what is implied by Hot Mom.

Sheldon Cooper's mom Mary from The Big Bang Theory. It's not just her physical appearance but also her very warm demeanor. Her first appearance had her flirting with Sheldon's boss, which supports how she is meant to be an attractive older lady. In contrast Leonard's mom Beverly is icy cold and always wears rather dowdy professional attire, where despite being attractive in her own right she is not meant to be seen as appealing in that way.

WTF does any of that have to do with them being a mother? It is just an attractive (in you eyes) person with a warm demeanor, who flirts with people. And you have another mom that is more professional. But so what? You could have the exact same character be mothers or not mothers and it makes no difference to whether they are warm and flirty or cool and professional.

EDIT PS:

If there is anything to be salvaged from this, then the concept of "Attractive + Mother" needs be be broken up into distinct tropes by the role that it plays in the story. Otherwise it is just a coincidental pairing of two separate things, one of which is subjective.

For example, I could see

• Offspring embarrassed by parents being hit on, flirting with others, dating etc.
• Single Mother Looking for Love and a Good Step Father for their Child
• Single man prefers single mothers because he thinks they are more desperate for love
• Person has fetish for woman that are mothers
• Person is attracted to their own mother
• Stacy's Mom
• Mother Daughter Threesome (which has been cut though)

You could also argue that any of the above could be made gender neutral by replacing Mother with Parent.

edited 20th Sep '13 4:18:35 AM by Catbert

What's with that language? Aren't people allowed to have a different opinion what to do with this trope and how to fix the misuse? It shall be determined by consensus.

The things from the examples have relevance for the trope. That's unusual behaviour for mothers, at least for the archetypal mother figure as I see it (like Earth Mother) and so it happens that it has a story-telling meaning. It's a pattern appearing in fiction, therefore it's a trope.

Also I think that a combination of traits or tropes is often considered a new distinct trope. Proper Lady + Action Girl = Lady of War

I was of course referring to the F-part of that acronym.

edited 20th Sep '13 6:32:14 AM by XFllo

"What's with that language?"

What, you've never seen acronyms before?

"That's unusual behaviour for mothers"

Even if we can make that argument (and I'm not convinced it is true), then it becomes about characterization based on behavior, rather than simply being "hot".

Flirty Parent might be a trope, but even then it only becomes relevant if the fact that they are a parent changes how their flirty behavior impacts the story in some measurable way, like having their kids be embarrassed by their behavior. Like I already said, _that specific thing_ could be a trope.

But "Attractive + Mother" is just a coincidental pairing of two characteristics that are not dependent on each other.

edited 20th Sep '13 5:07:39 AM by Catbert

The only connection between "Attractive" and "Mother" I can think of is that the latter is less likely to manifest the former traits.

You're describing Troperithmetic.

edited 20th Sep '13 5:14:16 AM by crazysamaritan

And that is a subjective judgement which isn't really demonstrable.

Even if it was any actual statistical difference between the attractiveness of mothers in fiction and the attractiveness of mothers in Real Life, what evidence do we have that this is not simply a product of characters in fiction (especially visual fiction) tending to be more attractive, in general?

Most of all, what is the story telling relevance of this attractiveness which changes when it is a mother vs. any other woman? I've proposed several examples of when it could be relevant, but they work best as separate tropes, rather than as one big page that had to hard scrubbed and locked to in order to change it from being simply a list of mothers that tropers want to... And even now the examples are all over the place.

edited 20th Sep '13 5:23:51 AM by Catbert

Because that would be an independent trend. The thing I mention is that the RL trend doesn't show up, or only in reduced fashion, in fiction.

So what now? A crowner?

Might as well, everyone's pretty much made their case multiple times at this point.

No, let's discuss more. We're making progress.

Flirty Parent seems like a trope. I also mentioned earlier the idea of Single Mom Looking For Love. We seem to agree that the tropable factor is that this character, though she is a mother, is a viable love interest and pursues others or is pursued by them. So there's something more here other than "she's hot."