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I don’t necessarily have a problem with people shipping a hot guy and the female protagonist simply because “he’s hot.” I mean you can have a wide variety of ships in pop culture. You can have actual romantic pairings that are real and meaningful. You can have Crack ships. You can have “dark” ships that deliberately tread into the more dangerous and sinister side of human nature (most of the those pair nicely with AU fics). You can virtually anything in fandom culture. My bigger issue is when people ship something but refuse to recognize why their ship is problematic or refuse to recognize and acknowledge that the message of that particular ship is culturally and socially dangerous.
So yes, POM is right to an extent that people will always ship the hot guy with a female protagonist because of something shallow like looks. That’s…okay, I guess. But the bigger issue is when the CSers and, probably more importantly, the show runners and writers can’t see that the message of the ship they are selling is deeply troubling on a feminist level, on a human level–emotionally, physically, emotionally and culturally.
But I also think “hotness” is itself a carefully constructed project, and part of a show’s overall message about any given character.
And then there’s that which is 100% spot on. Colin is a nice looking man. When he takes off the coat and the eyeliner he’s still nice (but mostly average) looking guy. It’s…well, it’s that Fabio-iziation @Nevermore talked about that suddenly makes him Ovary-explosion worthy (apparently). And the opposite is the same as well. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve read that it’s 100% okay for Baelfire to be dead because MRJ was not “hot” and did meet the surface expectations of what a true love for the main heroine should look like. It’s amazing Rumbelle has the fans it does; and it comes down to Bobby and Emilie’s chemistry and a tour de force first episode (Skin Deep). Had Bobby and Emilie not had phenomenal on screen chemistry and had Skin Deep been less compelling, I don’t know that Rumbelle would have become the powerhouse fandom ship it did (and, be fair, one of the biggest pre-season 4 criticism I’ve seen of Rumbelle, is that Rumple is *too old* for Belle. Note: I find this hilarious given that Hook is north of 200 for Emma.)