It’s clear that Adrian (Talia Shire’s character) is not supposed to become very attractive, as you can see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pRvHLEskTA . She’s supposed to be average in looks. When her hat is removed, her hair is short, not long. Incidentally, Talia Shire is two months and twelve days older than Sylvester Stallone. They were both 30 years old when Rocky was released. Supposedly, the only thing preventing them from getting together before that is that she’s shy.
No, I think she is presented as very attractive without the beanie had and the schoolmarm glasses. A perfect example of the trope.
And I don’t agree that long hair/short hair indicates level of attractiveness to most folks.
See exhibit 1 and exhibit 2 below.
mmm
Yes, and it’s clear to me that Adrian is not supposed to be more than average in looks.
I could not disagree more.
But that’s why they make both Coke and Pepsi.
mmm
A more typical example of a young woman removing her glasses and having her hair style changed is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUjlBP5gUrQ .
I think the problem here is there’s a disconnect between Hollywood plain and regular real life plain. I don’t think Adrian is really meant to be a beauty in Rocky, but she’s an actress, and many of them are beautiful in real life.
Loaded Weapon has my favorite example.
Yes, a lot of Hollywood actresses were discovered by studio executives because they were models.
The comparison of the standards is as follows:
Hollywood’s idea of the actress’s looks: somewhat less than average in looks.
These are about average for your class or office or neighborhood.
Hollywood’s idea: somewhat more than average in looks.
These are the very pretty ones who you would be glad to date if they actually thought you were worth dating.
Hollywood’s idea: very beautiful but for some reason interested in the hero.
You will never meet any women this beautiful in real life.
A subset of dead or nearly dead tropes are evolved tropes.
We’re now probably at least 20 years past the trope of not being being able to find a payphone to contact someone in an emergency, which then evolved into having a cellphone but not being able to get a signal, which has further resolved into either left the cellphone behind (itself becoming increasingly implausible), ran out of battery (ditto) or (the last bastion) it being broken in the the proceeding action/escape sequence.
I’m wondering what will happen to the trope when Sith Emperor Elon forces us to all upgrade to internal Neuralink communicators.
It’s not just the studio execs: it starts early.
There were two talented acting majors my college roommate palled around with. One was hilarious and bubbly and a dead ringer for a young Joan Blondel (also could turn it to dramatic and tragic on a dime). The other was also highly talented and a dead ringer for a young Laila Robins. Because that’s who she was.
The department head put Laila in all the big university productions, made the phone calls to get her into grad school at Yale, etc.; which she fully deserved. No modeling that I recall, just hard work.
The equally hard-working and talented chubby woman? Steered into children’s theater and oblivion.
Then the old “get hit on the head-- lose memory; get hit on the head again-- get memory back” trope will evolve into a “get hit on the head-- lose Neuralink connection; get hit on the head again-- get Neuralink connection back” trope 
I endorse percussive maintenance on anyone buying Musk products these days! So I look forward to the newly evolved trope 
‘Percussive maintenance’, I like that! Think I may borrow the phrase sometime, if that’s OK.
It’s not original to me, it’s been hanging around quite a while, even chosen for the title of the appropriate Trope!
(I’ve been using it since at least the early aughts, and it’s certainly older than that)
That’s what I’ve always been inclined to think. But I’ve never given it any thought except when the idea was right in front of me, like in a movie, so I never researched it.
In any case, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief on a point like that if they can do it well.
That would give the bad guys more control over the situation, to be sure.
How about the woman screaming and jumping on top of a table when she spots a mouse? I don’t think I’ve seen that in while.
Did that ever appear in a movie or television show or anything else available to everyone? I did a search on YouTube and only found a couple of videos, both fairly recent, with that trope. I did a search on Google and found some references to TikTok and Shutterstock about this trope.
It was pretty much a running gag on the current season of The Pitt, until a patient’s terrier came to the rescue in last night’s episode.
It happened in It Takes a Thief too. The hot babe was Sharon Acker, aka “Odonna” on ST: TOS.