Yuffie's Writing How-To's

My beef with BEAUTIFUL CHARACTERS

There are a ton of drop-dead gorgeous people in the world. Sure, it's realistic for your character to be one of those people.

But why are a majority of female protagonists described as beautiful?

Usually the answer is author wish-fulfillment. The author is writing the story as if they're the character, and who wouldn't want to be beautiful?

But I hate reading about characters described as beautiful. HATE. (There has only ever been one exception to that, which I'll talk about at the end.) Here's the thing about characters described as beautiful. That is a detail that usually has NO weight on the plot. Or it's a superficial, easy way for the character to get their way. To be the special snowflake, the person everyone loves.

Being beautiful lets a mean, vile, otherwise horrible person get away with having everyone instantly fall in love with them. They get things an "ugly" person wouldn't. People will randomly come up to talk to them (usually a hot guy), and even if they act rude and snarky back, the guy will keep returning because she's beautiful.

I just read a short story the other day on exactly that. The girl was sitting on the beach and reading a dictionary (because she's original and unique and the specialest of all snowflakes!). This random dude spots her and comes over to chat. She's rude beyond belief. He returns the next day. She's still rude, reserved, and unsocial. He returns the next day. And the next. And the next.

Like, WHY. This chick was awful to him. So the only explanation is that she's pretty, and that excuses her from unfriendly behavior. "You're acting rude, but you're beautiful, so the rudeness must just be a front for the beautiful person within!~!"

I see this trope so, so, so often in books, especially when there's a romance where the guy is pursuing the girl and she's acting rude and bitchy to him. Somehow a girl being rude to a guy is seen as cute and endearing if she's also beautiful.

The worst is when a character goes around calling herself plain or ordinary, and every other person on the planet is like: YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL F*** ME RIGHT NOW. I'll explain the poisonous nature of this in a bit.  

I just finished reading Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, and there were two distinct instances where people called Seraphina pretty, and that's when she needed information or something done, which they of course gave to her. If she'd been ugly, she probably wouldn't have been given the same courtesy by these strangers.

So very often, beauty turns into a plot device, the reason a character gets what they need to push the plot forward. They're attractive, so people who otherwise wouldn't give them a second glance are suddenly falling over themselves to help her out. That's not cool (an exception will be explained below).

Another negative implication of beauty comes with romance. The moment a character gets described as beautiful, it dampens my perception of how in love these characters really are. If they fell in love because of their personalities, that's believable and makes for a more satisfying romance. But describe the character as beautiful (at the beginning, not later once we're deep in the relationship), and suddenly I'm doubting whether this is true love or lust.

Wattpad user KSawReeh made an insightful comment on this: "But usually, people states 'love' when they already see something beautiful."

When I write a romance, I don't want to put any doubt around my characters' relationships, so I don't make them beautiful. Or at least, I never describe them as such.

Of course if you really want to make your character beautiful, I can't stop you. These are just a few points to keep in mind.

The reason I started this rant was because of a comment on a youtube video (*audience groans*). The video was a prank on a friend, where they pulled a surprise wedding on him (his fiancee was involved, so of course he was down with it). But the thing is this guy is morbidly obese, while his fiancee was blonde, thin, and really pretty.

Half the comments were congratulating him. The other half were butt-hurt guys exclaiming how a guy like him could get such a beautiful woman to marry him, and then they were like "oh, he's probably super rich."

To assume a beautiful woman would only marry a guy with less-than-movie-star-looks if he was rich attaches a horrible stereotype and stigma to beauty. That's insulting to girls who do happen to be beautiful.

There was one comment in particular that really struck a cord with me. Since the wedding was impromptu, the groom was obviously not dressed for the occasion (he was in american flag pants and a t-shirt). So this comment went along the lines of "A girl like that will obviously want a redo. And she deserves it. She's beautiful."

What does that imply? A person is only deserving of a nice wedding if she's beautiful. Beauty makes a person more deserving.  

I am disgusted by that comment. And thus this rant.

Unfortunately, I see this in literature a lot, particularly YA. While it's not explicitly stated like that, it's generally implied when the FMC is beautiful and gets told that often, and she gets things handed to her for free that an unattractive person wouldn't have gotten (attention, friendliness, information, favors, multiple love interests, gifts, power, social status).

Beauty is a result of pure luck and/or money. Some people have the genes for traits society considers attractive. Some people don't. And then you need money to buy cosmetics, orthodontist appointments, nice clothes, etc.

We're spoonfed to believe you must be beautiful and physically attractive in order to have worth in this society. We have to be good looking to accomplish things and live a happy and satisfying life. Billboards, magazines, TV, movies, ads—all of them feature gorgeous people because no one wants to see someone who isn't physically attractive. Heck, look at women's razor commercials. They have the woman on screen shaving a hairless leg. That's how ridiculously averted we are as a society to anything less than god-like looks.

You get that whenever you read a story about the plain jane protagonist who thinks she's ugly but then scores of people tell her otherwise, convincing her that she IS beautiful, thus she is worth something. The fact of convincing a character that they're beautiful sends the message that beauty is necesssary. "I'm not beautiful." "Don't say that! You're gorgeous! See, everything's fine? It wouldn't have been fine if you were unattractive, but you happen to be very attractive, so no worries." If you're not beautiful, you're considered worthless.

Like I said, if you want to write a beautiful character, I can't stop you. I personally never describe my characters as beautiful unless it's genuinely important to the plot that they be beautiful (and I think I only have one character, a male one actually, who I describe as very physically attractive for a reason vital to his character and the story's message).

So what is an example of a plot-relevant reason to have a beautiful character? Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray stars an Adonis of a protagonist. Dorian is gorgeous, and his beauty is described for pages on end. But that's the point of the book! Dorian gets a painting done of him, and Dorian, being vain and narcissistic, wishes he could be like the "him" in the painting and never age. He gets his wish. The painting starts aging while he keeps the same youthful, beautiful appearance until his death. The reason the artist used Dorian as a model was because Dorian was so good looking. There wouldn't be a story without Dorian being beautiful.

That's how you add meaning to a character described as beautiful. It shouldn't be there as your character's deus ex machine, the thing that gets them their way, their guy, sympathy and love and affection from random strangers, and helps them achieve their goals. They should achieve them because they worked for it and earned it, not because they were lucky enough to be born with exceptional beauty.