Romantic Comedies About Beauty
How Perceptions About Physical Appearance Can Delay Movie Love
Jun 25, 2009
It’s sad, but true. Most movie characters base their opinions of others – at least in part – on physical appearances. The beauties and jocks are assumed to be mindless, and the plain and overweight get attributed with “great personalities” and high IQ scores to make up for their lack of sex appeal.
In movie stereotypes, brains, beauty, and personality don’t usually coincide – at least not as naturally occurring traits. With the help of a good stylist, trainer, mentor, professor, and/or friend, however, there’s hope for every character to balance his or her inner and outer beauty to find a soul mate.
The following romantic films explore perceptions – and often misperceptions – of physical appearances in the quest for love.
The Stereotype of Beautiful Women
The House Bunny (2008): Anna Faris stars as a beautiful Playboy playmate who must rely on her inner strength and intelligence to get by in the world after being forced to leave the Playboy mansion. The men, women, and students on the college campus where she works as a house mother judge her harshly by her appearance and former occupation as a centerfold model.
Legally Blonde (2001): Reese Witherspoon stars as a beautiful sorority girl who leaves the comfort of her rich California life to go to Harvard Law School. Despite her intelligence, she faces prejudice from her teachers and classmates based on her good looks and outstanding social skills.
Unattractive Women and Their Makeovers
America’s Sweethearts (2001): Julia Roberts co-stars as the formerly fat sister of a beautiful movie star (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who lived in her sister’s shadow for most of her life until she slimmed down. In order to find love, she needs to shed her bad self-image, which was based almost entirely on her physical appearance.
Shallow Hal (2001): After a lifetime of focusing only on superficial qualities in women, a man (Jack Black) gets hypnotized into seeing people’s inner beauty as outer manifestations. He falls in love with a 300-pound woman (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is a lovely person despite suffering from low self-esteem.
Miss Congeniality (2000): Sandra Bullock stars as a crude and unkempt FBI agent who must find her inner beauty pageant queen to foil a serial killer. When she changes herself for the pageant, she also improves her love life.
Moonstruck (1987) Cher stars as a frumpy Italian widow who has given up on love. When she meets an exciting new man, however, she buys sexy clothes and gets a makeover that transform her into a stunning beauty.
Unattractive Men and Their Makeovers
Just Friends (2005): Ryan Reynolds stars as a high-powered, cold-hearted womanizer who was rejected as a youth because he was fat. Now handsome and lean, he revisits his hometown to impress his old friends and former unrequited love interest with his attractive new exterior – that is, until his unattractive interior gets in the way.
The Boyfriend School (alternate title: Don’t Tell Her It’s Me) (1990): Steve Guttenberg stars as a cartoonist who meets an interesting woman (Jami Gertz) while he’s undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer. She rejects him because he’s bald and bloated from the therapies, yet later after he’s regained his health and good looks, she falls in love with him not knowing his true identity.
Movie Lessons About Love
If there’s a lesson to be learned about movie love, it’s that in order to find someone special, the homely must get pretty, the fat must get thin, and the unintelligent must improve their minds. Characters need to reflect growth and change throughout the film to reach a satisfying conclusion, but when the shift occurs in thought patterns (as in Shallow Hal) rather than appearances, it’s truly movie magic.
For more information about movies that explore issues of beauty, read 8 Reasons to Love Roxanne Starring Steve Martin and Ben Stiller’s Zoolander on DVD.
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