Basic Trope: A character — almost Always Female — meant to be from a native tribe or otherwise uncivilized clime is strikingly attractive according to the standards of the contemporary audience.
- Straight: Cavewoman Alna is tall, slim, and well-groomed even though she lives in a mud hut with fifteen others and washes in a stream. She wears primitive leather clothing which happens to cover about as much as a stylish bikini does in The New '10s.
- Exaggerated: Cavewoman Alna emerges from the mud hut in the nude, with nothing but her salon-highlighted hair covering her perfect all-over tan and professionally-applied cosmetics.
- Downplayed:
- Cavewoman Alna is fairly attractive, in an athletic way, by the modern audience's standards, but she's dirty and wears appropriately non-sexy clothing. Her natural beauty overcomes her lack of grooming.
- Alna is Hollywood Homely, which is still better-looking than most other women of her tribe.
- Cavewoman Alna has a body comparable to that of a modern model, except that she's not even three feet tall.
- Justified:
- Alna is young, gets a lot of physical exercise, has access to a varied diet, and has figured out the basics of personal grooming.
- Alna is beautiful by the standards of her tribe, and to avoid Informed Attractiveness, the filmmakers have chosen to depict her as attractive by the standards of the audience.
- The sailors telling the story have not seen any women at all in over three years; it is understandable they would find an unwashed native attractive.
- Inverted: The explorers make an educational film for Alna depicting 21st-century men as they are but women as primitive hunter-gatherers, so she won't lose sympathy for them.
- Gender-Inverted: Caveman Andar is tall, muscular, and well-groomed even though he lives in a mud hut with fifteen others and washes in a stream. He's a Walking Shirtless Scene.
- Subverted:
- Alna is even less attractive, by contemporary audience standards, than the males of her culture.
- Alna's "tribe" adopted western civilization and technology ten generations ago.
- Double Subverted:
- Until she accidentally invents soap.
- Even still, Alna is ridiculously attractive.
- Parodied: Alna's contemporary-style beauty is the result of a chance meeting with a time-travelling Avon lady.
- Zig-Zagged: Alna looks like a 21st-century woman and is considered beautiful. Her twin sister, Ilna, looks like a typical cavewoman... and is also considered beautiful.
- Averted: The native population follow standards of beauty which are plausible for the setting and may or may not be in line with what a contemporary audience prefers.
- Enforced:
- Even though the filmmakers wanted to make a grittily realistic film, Executive Meddling declares that Alna must look really hot to draw in the young male audience.
- The filmmakers had to choose between the attractive by tribe standards, but highly unskilled, Diane, and the attractive by contemporary standards, but much better skilled, Betty and chose Ability over Appearance.
- Lampshaded:
- "Alna spend all time making self look pretty, not gather berries and dig for roots like other women of tribe."
- "Just look at her; a girl that pretty is worth abandoning modern civilization and all its technology."
- Invoked: "Alna" is a 21st-century anthropologist who poses as a beautiful native to distract a group of rival explorers.
- Exploited: The slave trappers kidnap woman from this tribe specifically because their good looks make them sell for a higher price.
- Defied:
- "Me no want look like your city women. Me and men of tribe think me pretty just like am. You take bad city-women things away and leave tribe alone."
- The director wants his portrayal of the tribe to be as historically accurate as possible, so he instructs his cast not to bathe or shave for a few months.
- Discussed: "You from future? You not! Your women, our women... both the same!"
- Conversed: "Don't worry, the cavemen are ugly trolls, but every cavewoman we see is going to be hot."
- Deconstructed:
- Alna's looks, while beautiful by the audience's standards, are so out of line with the standards of her tribe that she is shunned, ostracized, and believes herself to be ugly...
- Something is wrong with Alna. Her clan looks the way it does because they're adapted to their environment. Her lack of hair makes her susceptible to the cold, she's been unable to put on enough weight to survive winter, and her bright complexion is a result of "pretty" leprosy.
- Reconstructed:
- ...until she finds a nearby, slightly more advanced tribe she fits in with.
- Her tribe might rethink their treatment of her once a great pale warrior takes her as his bride.
- While this might have hindered her ability to survive normally, the settlers bring medicine, meaning she is less likely to die.
- Implied: Anthropologists Alice and Bob pay a visit to another culture that isn't shown on screen, but when they come back, they comment on how suspiciously attractive the native women were.
- Played for Laughs: Anthropologists Alice and Bob compare the actual appearances of the native women to how they were drawn or photographed in their textbooks and burst out laughing due to the disconnect.
- Played for Drama: The men of Alna's tribe come to think they're not worthy of their women because they're so much less attractive and go into self-imposed exile.
You go back to Nubile Savage page with Alna for more tropes...but no snou-snou! Alna not that kind of girl.
