Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. ... Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.
I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.
There's a meme comparing him to Angelina Jolie and while I personally don't think she's hot, a vast majority of people do, ergo Steve is objectively and undeniably the most attractive man on earth.
I’ve still never met a man who actually won’t recognize that a hot woman from another race isn’t hot. They can be insanely racist and still call a hot black woman hot. This casting director is a moron.
The likely explanation is that the publication intentionally misrepresented what the casting director said. They were probably talking about how what they DID with her in the first season challenged beauty standards. They intentionally made her "ugly" for the story. The casting director might not have meant they hired her because she wasn't conventionally attractive, but the publication knew they could get more clicks by quoting her out of context.
Also, this thread has been kind of toxic about beauty stuff which makes me sad :(
I don’t understand how making her ugly, having every character call her ugly, and then making her hot and having every character recognize she’s hot challenges beauty standards.
In the books there is very little mention of her being a hunchback. They didn't need to spend so much time it
The witcher approached, watchful and silent. He saw her left shoulder, slightly higher than her right.
He continued watching. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old although he preferred not to guess her real age. She moved with a natural, unaffected grace. No, there was no way of guessing what she'd been like before, what had been improved. He stopped thinking about it; there wasn't any sense.
But he suddenly knew the truth. He knew it. He knew what she used to be.
That’s interesting and all, but I don’t see how that helps their case that this challenged beauty standards. If anything, it reinforces beauty standards because she hated being ugly and was very happy to be made beautiful, and just about every person around her reinforced that.
Casting a beautiful actress and making her ugly never challenges beauty standards. The claim is bullshit.
However, focusing on her ugly beginning provides more weight to why she paid the price of sterility for beauty, and why she's so desperate to adopt ciri.
Imagine being the person being told: yeah, so we only hired you to challenge beauty standards. Not because you're the best at what you do, oh no no, but because you're ugly af
To be fair, she's definitely a breakout star of the show. I believe that before Witcher she had mostly worked in theatre, and even then was new to the industry.
I don't buy it, she was amazing in season one. Season two it's hard to tell because they apparently forgot everything about her characters wants, needs, and motivations.
I'm pretty sure the whole thing is that witches in the witcher universe can shape their faces however they want so they all choose to be super pretty? Am I misremembering or did yennefer make herself "not conventionally beautiful" on purpose?
“Unlike priestesses and druidesses, who only unwillingly took ugly or crippled girls, sorcerers took anyone who showed evidence of a predisposition. If the child passes the first years of training, magic entered into the equation – straightening and evening out legs, repairing bones which had badly knitted, patching harelips, removing scars, birthmarks and pox scars. The young sorceress would become attractive because the prestige of her profession demanded it.”
This is just another way in which the TV show butchered the original, although it is far below the ladder in comparison with the fact that they turned the endless interesting philosophical debates into dull, uninteresting conversations.
In the books yen uses magic to hide her hunchback and ugliness. Geralt being a Witcher and therefore trained/experienced to analyse magic in front of him quickly sees through the illusion. If the show had the character look uglier to begin with then that's probably a result of adapting the books. I haven't watched the show as I don't really like adaptations. Btw it's not just Yen that uses magic to hide ugliness either, almost all other sorceresses do as well in the books including Triss.
It's also like that in the books. In the book Geralt can somehow see it in her eyes. He says they're the eyes of a hunchback or something along those lines.
Most sorceresses in that universe enhance their beauty/youthfulness with magic. Most sorcerers do not because they're taken more seriously as they age. It's essentially a commentary on what each gender derives power from. Yennefer is like 80 years old by the time the main story begins.
It's far more simple than that. The students are predominantly nobles, and they pretty much completely cut all ties to their previous lives.
So why would you send a hot daughter to become a witch when you can marry her and make political gains? You send the disfigured one so you don't have to waste any more money on her.
The 5th son doesn't need to be disfigured to be essentially useless in the political world.
Not sure where you're getting that from. As far as I know none of the sorceresses' familial backgrounds are explored aside from Yennefer's. Either in the Netflix show, the books, or the games. Additionally, magical ability is exceedingly rare and not confined to the nobility. The chances of the majority of the sorceresses being from noble families is extremely low.
that would be a decent assumption to jump to if you didn't know the real answer i guess...
sorceresses in the Witcher were largely discarded children that were sick or disfigured. they eventually use magic to "fix" their bodies. many of them are obsessive about thiz and use magic to be the most beautiful person in the room because of their disfigured past.
there is very little connection between high birth and being a sorceress in the Witcher. all of the specific examples we hear are of farm peasents being scooped up just to take the burden off their parent's hands.
this is a bleak story, many of the sorcerers and sorceresses in it are at Best morally grey. it is not beyond most of them to take that child and experiment on them if they don't have the aptitude for magic. they are also sterile. much like witchers, they must take in outsiders to propagate.
unless the show has its own lore or something. IDK i stopped watching after season 2 was completely its own story, unrelated to the books at all.
What's is this with the teeth? Are they all wearing fake teeth? Don't tell me everyone has such a great mouth hygiene and dental care with sugar in everything you eat in US?
Serious answer? Yes. They often have either bleached teeth, which eventually destroys them so then they need veneers (fake front) and after that they get dentures.
Where are you getting this information? You’re talking about the US, where we have excellent healthcare for people who can afford it, and those people can fuckin afford it.
Sorry, but he is obviously proud of that. Look at his response https://lemm.ee/comment/12363119. He is clearly so much smarter than the rest of us, so he doesn't realize the dumb shit he is saying hahahaha.
No, you were very much misreading the comment. They just threw a crazy factoid out there. And then followed with a non sequitur about “rich =/= smart.” And why would my confusion mean I love privatized medicine?
I mean, you’re not wrong about me being smarter than the rest of you. I’m just choosing to ignore the part where it’s only in my head. Because I’m so much smarter. (jk)
I love how people like you sometimes stumble into weird truths hahaha. Like yeah, the stupid medical system you guys have in the US sucks even for people with money (luckily I'm from a latin american country that's not yet a pro/anti US dictatorship, but soon ...). Like it's that ridiculous, even people with money in the US end up fucking themselves medically, that's the freedom you get from that stupid healthcare system hahahaha. And people like you have stockholm syndrom.
Sadly this is infecting my country too, famous and rich people now have pennywise white teeth lol. For now I don't feel too bad for them, fuck these pricks wasting money in this shit while people go hungry here. But I do feel a bit sad for them.
If I ever get dummy rich I’m gonna get veneers, but I’m gonna have em just do the cheaper solid titanium ones for my entire mouth. Look like a fucken halloween monster so people won’t take me seriously if I ever get delirious enough to veer into politics or something else rich people shouldn’t do.
I don’t know what you think my beliefs about the healthcare system are. But I’m pretty damn sure they’re not what you’re assuming.
Because of our vampiric, fucked up greedy system of healthcare, it attracts pretty amazing doctors because they make insane money. Private money is good for the people who tend to control it. It’s just horrific for those of us without money. So the rich tend to get insanely good healthcare in the US.
I'm sorry if you meant something else dude. But read your comment and your reply and see what you actually said dude. You sound like you are saying that rich people are so smart and well protected from their bad decision by your healthcare system, so they are not whitening their teeth? Hell, even if you were right about this you don't provide any evidence or arguments for anything you said, you were just rude and condescending to everyone.
Again, I'm sorry if you meant something else. But people missinterpreting here is on you man.
Dude. I reread it dude. It does not read that way. Others have even said that’s not what I said. It could be misconstrued that way, but that’s exactly what it is. A misconstruction.
You’re just having a hard time because there’s nuance. I was expressing something that doesn’t scream that I hate the way things work, but that what the person was saying seemed outlandish. This being the internet, it’s hard when things aren’t “I believe X” and “well, I hate X, I’m a Y’er!” There is a range of conversation from disagreement on the subject to disagreement on the discussion to literally so much nuance in between. You just think because I said something that someone could say in a screed about supporting the system.
The gross inequity of for-profit healthcare means there is a ton of money to be made. Logically, that attracts high quality doctors—for those that can afford it. It shouldn’t be that way. But it is.
Just because you read the word “quality” in association with the US healthcare system doesn’t mean I support it. Recognizing trends and truths about things that may be construed as a positive for issues you don’t agree with does not mean you support the idea. Ignoring those truths just because they don’t jibe with you worldview is beyond ignorant.
Creating an unequal system that means access is limited to those with insane amounts of money will lead to higher amounts of money for people taking it from the rich people. Acknowledging that should be a pretty basic truth. But this is the time of internet two-sidesism, where people routinely ignore and deny basic realities because it doesn’t help their argument is fucking dumb. But that’s the temperature of the water we’re swimming in. So it struck you as strange that I wouldn’t do mental gymnastics to ignore a fact that’s gross, even if it could be construed as a positive for people who support it.
Look man. This comment is actually very different to your initial comment, and honestly it sounds very reasonable to me.
But can you explain to me what you were trying to say in the original comment please? Again, to me it reads like you are saying "rich and famous people are not whitening their teeths in the USA" which is factually incorrect. And to top it off, it looks like you are saying "it's impossible for rich people to get bad healthcare in the US because they have money", which is non sense as shown by this example of teeth whitening. And the more I read this comment, plus your very rude response ("are you okay?" Seriously dude, that's no way to have a conversation even if you were right), the more it looks like this is what you are saying. And that's what I was answering to.
I'm not saying, and I never said, that you think the healthcare system in the US is good. But the more I re read your comments, the less I understand what you were trying to say if it's not what I "quoted" above.
It’s not though. All I said is that people with tons of money can get the best care in the world—available in the US. That’s not a condemnation of socialized medicine, that’s not an endorsement of privatized medicine. That’s me saying exactly what I’m saying in this comment in another way. These people can afford the best. Because they’re rich as fuck.
Subtext: BEING RICH SHOULD NOT BE A HURDLE TO GOOD HEALTHCARE.
They’re in LA. A place that attracts plastic surgeons, orthodontists, dentists, any doctor that deals in appearance. Because they make insane money with their celebrity clientele.
So many Hollywood actors are nepo babies. They have cosmetic doctors that can do anything and everything at the right cost. I don’t have the data, but I’d be willing to bet it’s a majority of them that come from famous Hollywood parents. They are in Hollywood because they were born into it. They grew up with Hollywood level beautification health care. That includes teeth.
Unfortunately it's true. It's pretty well known in beauty/aesthetic procedure spaces, which many celebrities inhabit. It's why so many have samey looking teeth, it's wild.
its not completely wrong. getting cosmetic veneers is a pretty common practice in hollywood. they don't cause your teeth to decay or whatever, but lots of celebs have them.
Usually I don't notice but it was pretty jarring in Book of Boba Fett. The guy was all dusty living in a desert and then he smiles and his teeth are blindingly white. I was like.. Damn Disney you can't afford the makeup department to dirty those up a bit?
It’s even sadder when you have an actor(ess) that is beautiful in their own way and then gets surgery or something else to conform to the way everyone else looks.
I looked up a recent interview for The Boys season 4 and I have no idea what y'all are talking about. At most, she changed the type of makeup she regularly does and lost weight/aged out of her baby face. Your face can change a lot, especially in your 20s. I'm also not sure what wasn't conventionally about her at any point.
Thinking she's had surgery when she hasn't is more toxic for beauty standards than if she did have work done. Lip fillers, natural changes, and makeup aren't some work of the devil. There are people who do actually have problems, but not everyone does.
She hasn’t owned up to it but very much did not deny.
Edit: for the record I had no idea there was a whole thing around her a Megan Kelly. Can’t agree with all the hate.
That said, I’m replying to a comment about people having surgery/other medical procedures/drastic makeup etc that causes great changes and she was the first one that popped into my head. She hasn’t denied the surgery. Just said Kelly was spreading false news. But in all her statements she has never denied the surgery from my understanding.
I also don’t agree that it’s “fucking sad” as commenter above me states. She can do whatever she wants it’s her body. Having surgery or not doesn’t matter at all. I still hold that she looks drastically different from 5 years ago regardless of the reason.
I looked again, and it's even more clear to me that those changes are fat distribution and makeup related. She's always had a narrow nose, her jawline hasn't changed, her brow line, her chin, none of the things that plastic surgery typically alters have been noticeably tweaked! What is different is her makeup, particularly the way she contours her cheeks. She didn't do it in the past because her cheeks were more plump. Her makeup now tries to be more mature, creating contrast where it didn't before.
Dysphoria and learning to analyze bone structure vs fat vs makeup changes has made me pay more attention to these things. Even if she has done work, it isn't drastic and wouldn't be related to what makes her look so different. Faces change and can be changed without surgery. This is like some conspiracy theory body double or transvestiogation shit. Goofy af.
