once upon a time and women

[gwendl]

I think the writers and creators have done very well to try to make a variety of strong female personalities, but network television has long been guilty of portraying women with one single motive: finding their prince charming. I find Regina to be one of the most dynamic characters on television right now, female or male. She’s a queen who wears frickin’ leather pants! but I don’t think that the character helps the feminist movement much. Nothing against the actresses of the show, they are all very talented, but they are also all around 5’6″ and 115lbs with tiny facial features and cute outfits. Not very empowering to the stout women or the tall ones with big noses to see that the only women who look like them will probably end up playing witches and monsters.

[beautyistruth]

Well, I’ll give you that. The women on the show are all incredibly attractive, but this includes the witches and monsters. Regina, Cora and the Siren are all gorgeous women. To be fair, most of the men are pretty attractive as well, though. They seem to keep casting pretty people 🙂

[faux pax]

Unfortunately it would seem that TV is allergic to normal looking people. Hell, the only not blow-you-out-of-the-water-hot person on the show is MRJ and that’s what makes him so attractive to me.

For the most part, unless you are pretty, skinny, and straight, TV doesn’t want you unless that’s what the storyline is centered around. Take Drop Dead Diva. A show about a beautiful, successful, and BIG girl who spends almost ever episode dealing with her self esteem and the challenges of being plus size.

It’s impossible for Hollywood to have those kind of things be merely a single facet of a person unless it’s the most important facet. So much for art imitating reality, huh?

The only example i can recall off the top of my head to counter this is Diana from White Collar. It mentions the fact that she’s a lesbian a handful of times in the series and is never really important to the storyline. I think the biggest deal they make of it is when she has to hit on a guy to keep undercover and someone mentions that it’s not really her cup of tea, or something along those lines.

[melliemd]

@Faux Pax wrote:

Hell, the only not blow-you-out-of-the-water-hot person on the show is MRJ and that’s what makes him so attractive to me.

Wait, what? Really? You’re serious?

Uh…

Don’t get me wrong, I may find one or more of these people attractive, but they absolutely aren’t blow-you-out-of-the-water hot… And not conventionally ‘hot’, especially compared to MRJ… (I very nearly put Raphael Sbarge on here as well, as his face-shape, teeth and hairline definitely don’t go with “blow-you-out-of-the-water hot”… Actually, yeah. I’m right about him:

[faux pax]

Don’t get me wrong, I may find one or more of these people attractive, but they absolutely aren’t blow-you-out-of-the-water hot… And not conventionally ‘hot’, especially compared to MRJ..

True. I guess my mind kind of fogged on that one and i think there was an unspoken “under fifty (looking)” in my head, which excludes all but two or three of them.

But there is no denying that Hollywood heavily leans towards looks over talent (If it where otherwise do you think Alex Pettyfer would ever have gotten a job?).

[melliemd]

Haha, that is very true. But all of the actors in Once Upon a Time are EXTREMELY talented, I am consistently blown away by them. So put yourself in the shoes of the producers and the casting directors: You have three actors all equally talented, but one of them also has an incredible look. Well as much as we criticize TV/movies for only having the good-looking people on TV, we allow them to by being absolutely fanatical over them. We fangirl/fanboy. It’s the sad truth that if they did a show with actors all looking completely average as opposed to “Hollywood average” where it wasn’t a plot-point that they were like that, it would have low ratings. And it’s a ratings game in the end.

[faux pax]

Unfortunately TV is the ultimate form of escapism–we love to put ourselves in the shoes of our favorite characters–and no one want to imagine themselves as ugly. *sigh*

[gwendl]

Hmmm, I didn’t mean for this to go off topic. My beef is clearly with US network television, not OUAT.

I’d like to add that none of the actors pictured above are “ugly” or “average”. They’re unique 🙂

[obisgirl]

@beautyistruth wrote:

@Faux Pax wrote:

Along this topic, though, there was one thing that did kind of erk me. I was always bothered by how much the whole town turned on MM after her affair with David came to light, but no one really seemed to say anything to him. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it only seemed that way. I’ll have to watch the epp again to be sure, but the best sign that everyone was against her seemed to be the slut-mobile, another construction of Regina’s.

Also, I think the show did a good job showing how unfair it was that MMB and not David got the lion’s share of the shaming, making the viewer sympathize with her rather than judge her.

That always bothered me too. As they say, it takes two to tango and it would have been nice if Granny ‘granny-slapped’ David too but we never got that scene. I guess the town was kind to him because he was still having trouble with his memory but still…I know I wasn’t the only one who wanted to slap David last season. 😆

[frumpybutsupersmart]

@beautyistruth wrote:

Also, I think the show did a good job showing how unfair it was that MMB and not David got the lion’s share of the shaming, making the viewer sympathize with her rather than judge her.

I agree – I think most of the viewers judged David more than MM. I certainly did.

@Faux Pax wrote:

For every strong woman who is big on being a mother (Snow) there is a male who is just as devoted (Who could ever forget Jefferson?).

Another good father is Hansel and Gretel’s dad (once he actually met them). And in FTL he was a great dad who got captured by Regina because she needed children to send into the Blind Witch’s house.

[Author]

Posts