Tuesday, 14 October 2008

• Currently Listening Nothing Is Sound By Switchfoot We Are One Tonight see related

  Guest Post: Why Ugly Duckling Stories Are A Tool Of the Devil

  My friend Neko wrote an essay that I thought y'all would enjoy, and she has graciously given me permission to duplicate it here. I hope you like it.
  
  

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  I take issue with ugly duckling stories - stories that start with an "unattractive" girl and change her, through a series of plot contrivances, into a beautiful girl who ends up with her dream guy. My problem boils down to the idea that a girl has to be conventionally beautiful to get the guy. A lot of people will protest here, pointing at the guy in the end decides that it's what's inside that counts, he loves her for herself, etc etc. Sometimes the guy has been in love with her all along, even when she was "ugly". Whether or not the characters say it, the usual excuse is that he loves her for who she is inside.

  And that would be fine, except that  no girl ever goes back to looking the way she did before. In The Princess Diaries, Mia gets all prettied up by her grandmother and continues to be pretty for the next movie and a half. Her hair never curls again, and suddenly all her clothes look nice forever. I didn't see the movie The House Bunny, but let's review the basic plot as shown in the previews: former Playboy bunny moves into nerd-filled sorority house to teach them how to be skanks and get guys. DOES NO ONE ELSE SEE A PROBLEM HERE.  Sure, by the end of the movie we're getting the same token 'be yourself and people will like you' spiel, but there's no reason to believe that. The girls were being themselves at the beginning of the movie, and they were not getting dates. At the end of the movie, after makeovers and new wardrobes and DATING TIPS FROM A BUNNY ARGH MY HEAD IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE, they have dates. The message here is very clear: attractive (read: slutty) girls win in the end. You have to be attractive (continue reading: slutty) for guys to like you. If guys don't like you, you will be miserable and alone always. Mean Girls does the same thing - Cady has only two friends, both of whom are outcasts, until she starts dressing like the popular girls, generating drama like the popular girls, and being a complete bitch like the popular girls. The only characters in that movie who are 'true to themselves' are the mathletes and Janis and Damian (both of whom are accused of homosexuality by the popular girls). Even after Cady supposedly goes back to her 'true self', she continues to dress the same way.
  

  There are so many, many issues in all of these movies (and in the general media) that it's hard to restrain myself to just one. I'm trying to do so because I feel like this doesn't get addressed often enough. These movies purport to be teaching girls that they have to be true to themselves to find happiness (which means true love with a boy, of course). However, what they teach is that girls have to look a certain way, have to be attractive (read: sexually desirable to boys) to be happy (read: to make a boy fall in love with them). It's ridiculous.

  I could reword the message of all of these movies to this: being yourself is okay as long as you continue to outwardly conform to social standards of beauty. We don't care how you act or what you think as long as you're beautiful. Or even more simply: all that matters is how you look, because that is what determines your marriageability.
  
  

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  Do you like "ugly duckling" stories? If you could radically change your appearance like the girls in those movies, would you, and would your new appearance conform to social standards of beauty
  

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