It’s SUPPOSED to be a non sequitur. For the rest of the bit, Beth has been defining words in terms of pretty, but then abruptly changes premise, cadence, and tone. It’s the sudden swerve that makes it amusing. The purpose of the bit isn’t to be " honest " about lookism or the Eurocentrism of beauty standards; it’s to make the viewers laugh.
THAT isn’t true. There’s tons to d jokes that work only because they’re absurd, because they’re so obviously and nakedly UNTRUE. Take any episode of FAMILY GJY.
Really? It seems to me “Pretty and not white” leads to a bigger laugh, because it’s the better answer when Alexander’s character asks “then what am I?” and walks away pleased.
Then again, I’d change “Sexy” to “pretty with a nice rack” to cover cute and sexy folks like Melissa Rauch.
I never watched* News Radio* so I don’t know who they were, but even though I like and agree with the red-haired chicks terminology, I think she’s totally wrong in regards to themselves…The dark-haired girl sitting at the desk is the definition of cute! She has a baby face and short, dark hair. The red-haired girl is most definitely ***not ***cute, she’s pretty. Mature, plain/sophisticated face, and long, flowing red hair.
‘Beauty’ means aesthetic attractiveness. You can pontificate on this for hours, but it basically just means that someone or something is pleasing to look at. ‘Pretty’ is a lesser form of aesthetic attractiveness with the same meaning.
‘Sexy’ implies, as would be expected, that the speaker wants to have sex with the person in question. It doesn’t necessarily have refer to a beautiful, cute, or pretty person, but it usually does.
‘Cute’ is a related term that focuses on the youth of the person the label is applied to. Although calling someone cute doesn’t necessarily imply a desire for sex, it’s related in that both are subjective judgments made in the eye of the beholder.
Sunsets are beautiful, flowers are pretty, ducklings are cute. You can take what makes them so and apply it to people to see the differences. Beautiful people are breathtaking or have a degree of splendor about them, pretty people are unaggressively pleasing to look at, cute people have youthful features like small upturned noses, large eyes, etc.
Seems to me that “beauty” speaks to a more classical, time-less look, whereas “pretty” is more conventional, youthful, and thus fleeting. Prettiness wanes with age, but a person matures into beauty. A beautiful face in the 1930s is the same in the 2030s. But pretty, maybe not so much.
Huh. It doesn’t play that way at all to me. I’m a big fan of non sequitur humor, despite today’s weather, but I didn’t hear it like that. Maybe if I were more familiar with the show, which I’ve not watched in more than a decade, I’d hear it as a non sequitur.
If it’s supposed to non sequitur then it’s really poor non sequitur humor. All it comes off as is a failed joke.
I’m glad to see that this is still remembered whenever this question arises…
Like Left Hand OD said below, there should be a “grain of truth.” It’s possible to have a non-tall beautiful woman, or a gorgeous woman without great hair – but there is a grain (or more) of truth in those definitions.
For me the swerve to “ugly” worked well. It’s not that the all “exotic” women are ugly, it’s just that it can be a used to describe a woman with unusual features – whether or not the woman is beautiful/cute/pretty in any culture anywhere on earth. So, it could apply to a non-attractive woman. That gives it the “grain of truth” and because the definition is spoken by a “quirky” character it doesn’t need more than that grain to work.
Huh? I’m definitely not gorgeous, and I never have been. I always thought “Pretty for a Jewish girl” meant “the best Jews can do,” in other words, the best of us will never be as pretty as pretty gentile girls.
Not that I agree with the idea, but I’ve heard it expressed often enough to be fairly sure some people think that way.
I agree. It doesn’t come across as a non sequitur to me, but rather as “We don’t know how to end the joke without actually going there.” With going there being racial.
But I can see two white women coming up with a throwaway comment for “exotic” since white women aren’t likely to be described that in the first place. So in that way, I guess it is a non sequitur. Doesn’t take away the cringe, though.
Personally, “interesting” is how I might describe someone who has a ugly face.
Marlo Thomas= cute
Ann Margret= Sexy
Liz Taylor= Beautiful
loretta young= Pretty
(All of them when they were youngin’s, of course):rolleyes:
Am I giving my age away?
Example: My last girlfriend. Short, fat, and not ugly, but not really pretty either. And I found out too late that that she suffered from both Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. But when we first met, there was just something about the way she moved, and she had the most commanding presence in her eyes.
I disagree with the notion that “exotic” means “pretty and not white.” Aisha Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Lucy Liu are all beautiful in my eyes, but I wouldn’t describe any of them as exotic.
I take exotic to mean uncommon or foreign with a positive connotation. Black, Asian and Latino women are not uncommon to most Americans who live in a large city I would imagine.
OK, I had to Google Piper Perabo, but she has very regular features. Symmetrical, well-proportioned; what did you think I meant by “regular”?
Now, sometimes an unusual feature can actually look good on a particular face, especially if the person carries it well, like Paget Brewster’s big nose. Her nose isn’t just not a problem, it’s actually somehow sexy. She a woman who’s pretty, beautiful, and sexy, and will probably remain beautiful even as she ages, and may even remain sexy. She’s not cute, though, and I have a feeling that she hasn’t been cute since she was really little, but she probably was sexy from a young age.
I think I equated ‘regular’ with ‘classical’ features. Piper’s face may be symmetrical, but I wouldn’t say well-proportioned. She has quite an unusual (read: large) mouth. That’s what I find exotic.
And agreeing with some other posters, I don’t think exotic is limited to non-white, but could imagine it being interpreted to mean that.
Perhaps Rossy de Palma is a better example?
In my book:
Pretty-Mostly applied to mildly attractive women of any age. (http://english.chosun.com/site/data/img_dir/2014/06/06/2014060600467_0.jpg)
Cute-Applied to younger girls (or at least those with youngish features) who are mild to moderately attractive (http://blog-imgs-38.fc2.com/l/a/u/laughlaughsmile/20100828214723bbd.jpg)
Beautiful-Usually my strongest term, applied to very attractive women who are usually adult. (http://www.allofan.com/img/item/gr8/imgsrc_12409.jpg)
Sexy-Usually applied to females who I find bodily attractive
There is a good deal of interchange between pretty/cute/beautiful since they usually are deemed by criteria such as facial feature, hair, skin etc. while sexy is more determined by the body.
A friend of mine was describing a woman he met who knew me. Turned out to be a neighbor who is very average; average height, average weight, average looks, etc.
But his description started out, “Well, she ain’t a big fat woman.” Then he paused to see if I knew, from that description, who he was describing. (He is 70 years old and maybe 280 pounds)