Brandyjane wrote:There's not a "perfect" type of woman out there, whether we're talking about looks, personality, or the whole package. Unfortunately the way Hoshi and T'Pol were treated in Enterprise kind of reinforced the idea that there is a "right" way for a woman to look or act. Hoshi is a great friend, but if you want to be hot and have guys fall all over you, you have to look like T'Pol. That's the message that was sent. Of course, the weird thing is that Linda Park is beautiful, and I've read plenty of comments by heterosexual guys who agree! I've always wondered why there has to be just one designated Hot Girl on a show like Ent. I don't know if this is the reason or not, but one thing that occurred to me was that maybe the writers decided that all of the lust/attraction has to be focused on just one woman because if it's spread around it will look like the writers are objectifying women in general, not just one woman on the show.
Honestly, I don't think it has so much to do with a reluctance to have more than one hottie on the show. It has more to do with keeping your characters distinctive. Producers don't want characters that are too similar because that's kind of bland -- unless the drama comes from the conflict of two characters being "too much alike." So if both girls were hotties, there'd have to be some kind of rivalry, and they'd have to be radically different in another way (one smart and one not so much, for example -- which would not work well in the context of Star Trek). While the goal of good character development is to make the viewer at home feel like he or she is watching "real people," the truth of the matter of "how it's done" is that each character is nothing more than a "type," with little details filled in for personalization. If you analyze it critically, no matter how "real" a character seems, there's still some identifiable exaggeration/unreality compared to someone you may know in real life who's like that, because that's needed in order to make it come across in the screen. Another reason for not making them too similar is because you want the viewer to "know who the characters are" at any point they start watching -- you just started watching in Season 3 and you've only seen a couple of episodes, but you can distinguish between them through more than just physical attributes.
Also, if you ask most straight guys what they think, I think most will answer that T'Pol is a great fantasy, but Hoshi is the girl they'd rather be with. Tyra Banks did this thing on her show a few years ago and I thought it was pretty revealing -- men perceive women differently than women do. The gist of what they found was, men are more likely to respond to a vibrant personality and *self-assuredness* than they do a physical "ideal." In fact, Tyra took a panel of men, showed them bathing suit photos of women from the neck down, and the results were shocking. More curvy-to-overweight girls got the "oh, hell YEAH!" from guys than supermodel types. When asked "why did you like that photo?" a lot of it had to do with things like the posture projecting confidence or looking like she was having a good time or whatever.
So any way, I know that this is convoluted and likely to get split off into another thread (sorry -- I'm too tired and lazy this morning to cherry pick bits and pieces out of this one for starting a new one elsewhere!), but whenever I see "babe of the show" conversation, I can't help thinking that the problem may not be men and what they want, but rather what women *think* men want.
Just some more loose change I found in the couch.
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