# "Unattractive" Celebrities: U Mad Bro? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 3, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934 "2014-06-03T15:43:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/81 "2014-06-05T11:31:22Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > I thought that was ridiculous, that Alicia looked yummy as Batgirl, and that her acting skills were up to the level of that movie. I thought she looked fine. But she didn’t look strong or athletic. A cute girl in a batgirl suit who didn’t look very convincing in the role. I thought she was miscast but she certainly wasn’t fat. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/82 "2014-06-05T13:30:00Z")
> [@racepug](#): > > Tough beans. That’s how I feel about them whether you feel it’s “sane” or not. I really don’t quite see how my feelings towards those people affect you. It affects other people when you make those feelings public and they have to listen to / read them. Now while you are certainly entitled to say / write what you like, other people are also entitled to make inferences about you from what you say/write. > [@racepug](#): > > Actually, I’m not. I was just giving you examples of female celebrities that I don’t find the least bit attractive. And here I thought “honesty is the best policy.” Guess not. Well, it’s not really “honesty”. You aren’t telling us why you feel it’s so important to you to make your disgust for these particular women known in such an over the top fashion. I mean I hate Real Housewives or Whereverthefuck because I can’t stand the bickering and screeching and over the top crazy behavior. And I can maybe see hating any of the actresses from Sex and the City or Girls because of the vapid characters they play. But that’s a long way off from being personally offended by Lena Dunham’s existence. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/83 "2014-06-05T13:38:38Z")
Bravo, **msmith**! Well stated. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/84 "2014-06-05T16:10:26Z")
> [@racepug](#): > > Actually, I’m not. I was just giving you examples of female celebrities that I don’t find the least bit attractive. And here I thought “honesty is the best policy.” Guess not. No, being a decent human being is the best policy. Plenty of assholes play the “I was just being honest” card when they hurt someone’s feelings or react to trivial matters with unnecessary harshness or rage when what they should be focusing on is becoming more compassionate people. There are ways to be honest without being a dick, but it usually requires some self-reflection and a desire to want to improve oneself. If you’re often getting defensive and saying things like “They’re the ones with the problem” or “People don’t really want to hear the unvarnished truth”, the issue is most likely with your own personality. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/85 "2014-06-05T16:24:44Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I thought she looked fine. But she didn’t look strong or athletic. A cute girl in a batgirl suit who didn’t look very convincing in the role. I thought she was miscast but she certainly wasn’t fat. Yeah. She looked good in her outfit, but she didn’t look athletic. It wasn’t her weight (which was fine) but her lack of muscles; she doesn’t have superpowers, so she actually does need to be very fit. She didn’t look like she’d be up for jumping around and kicking stuff much, she just looked like a pretty girl with a nice figure that the costume sometimes made look fat, even though she really wasn’t. And she didn’t move very well - her kicks looked like they took effort. A little training and a better costume and she would have been fine. Most of the commentary I saw at the time though was about her not looking good in her outfit. They’d have been fine with a teeny tiny skinny girl who also didn’t have any muscles and was just as miscast. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![emcee2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emcee2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emcee2k)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/86 "2014-06-05T17:49:17Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 😕 Wow, you totally missed the point. Nobody here is saying it’s “sexist” to find some women attractive and others not (if you happen to be attracted to women, that is). > > Nor is anybody bitching about anyone asking what others see in something he doesn’t like. > > What we’re discussing is simply why some people get emotional enough about their celebrity crushes to express actual intense **revulsion** or **hostility** for celebrities who don’t appeal to them physically. No, you’re missed my point. I not talking about other posters having those two specific complaints. Although, if that thread was started today, that’s probably what they’d come up with. And I don’t believe you’re not seeing the no-so-subtle accusations of sexism and/or misogyny in this thread. What I’m taking about is how that thread ran three pages in 2010 without anyone coming up with the idiotic interpretation of jokes and hyperbole as hate and anger and then going into lecture mode. The culture here has changed since then. That was before everyone started falling over each other to be the first to say “tsk tsk”. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/87 "2014-06-05T18:45:10Z")
> [@racepug](#): > > Tough beans. That’s how I feel about them whether you feel it’s “sane” or not. I really don’t quite see how my feelings towards those people affect you. People are just giving their honest opinions about your posts. I thought you were all in favor of honesty? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/88 "2014-06-05T18:59:25Z")
> [@emcee2k](#): > > No, you’re missed my point. I not talking about other posters having those two specific complaints. Although, if that thread was started today, that’s probably what they’d come up with. And I don’t believe you’re not seeing the no-so-subtle accusations of sexism and/or misogyny in this thread. I’m not claiming that nobody is making “no-so-subtle” accusations of sexism and/or misogyny in this thread. My point is that **nobody is directing any such accusations towards anybody else simply for having individual _preferences_ about what’s attractive or what’s not**. What’s inspiring inferences of sexism and/or misogyny is posters expressing **vehement contempt or disgust** towards female celebrities simply because they don’t meet their individual preferences about attractiveness. And mind you, we’re talking here about examples of clean, healthy, carefully groomed, flatteringly photographed, young or youngish women who are regarded by millions of people as well up among the most beautiful human females in the world. Not some kind of fetish-porn freaks with festering sores or mouths full of maggots, slave-act coprophagia, etc. If somebody is feeling severe visceral revulsion or hostility and contempt just from seeing mainstream publicity photos of the sort of women discussed here, there is something else going on besides “meh, not really my type”. [QUOTE=emcee2k] What I’m taking about is how that thread ran three pages in 2010 without anyone coming up with the idiotic interpretation of jokes and hyperbole as hate and anger and then going into lecture mode. The culture here has changed since then. That was before everyone started falling over each other to be the first to say “tsk tsk”. [/quote] Your reading comprehension’s at fault. The part of the discussion from 2010 didn’t garner any “tsk tsk” in that thread because it wasn’t the part with the expressions of extreme contempt and disgust. The posts with remarks like “zombie ugly”, “her face looks like a war zone”, “[a hideously deformed face image is] a good picture of her”, etc., were all from 2013 or 2014. So if “the culture has changed”, it’s perhaps not in the way you think. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/89 "2014-06-05T19:08:40Z")
To be fair, the “zombie ugly” remark appears to have been a poor attempt at a zombie thread joke, versus a real comment on her appearance. But I have another example of the kind of misogynist hate. There was a thread here on this board discussing musician/singers, and someone described Colbie Caillat as “that whore”, simply because they don’t appreciate her style of music. WTF gets into people? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/90 "2014-06-05T19:12:33Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > Three, perhaps, is that males are more likely than females to preen and posture and assert their claimed place in the hierarchy. As in: _I am so high in status that I can disdain women who’ve achieved movie-stardom! That’s how important **I** am!_ Might also be a fox and the grapes thing - I can’t have that star in a million years, and she’d laugh at me if I tried, so she must be an ugly ho at heart. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/91 "2014-06-05T19:18:30Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Well sure. We are talking about Hollywood standards. Its like complaining about the worst player on your favorite major league baseball team. He might suck in the context of a pro team but he is still probably a better athlete than you have ever met in your life. But you can still boo when he strikes out. But if you were organizing a neighborhood team you’d want him on it. If the guys calling actresses ugly ran across one in a bar who showed the slightest interest, I think their personal standards would “fall” low enough to go home with her. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/92 "2014-06-05T19:18:46Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Might also be a fox and the grapes thing - I can’t have that star in a million years, and she’d laugh at me if I tried, so she must be an ugly ho at heart. Wouldn’t that apply to the stars the guy finds attractive as well? To my mind, it has a greater element of choosing to champion X against Y. Once the choice is made, X becomes the exemplar of every virtue and Y becomes an abomination. See: sports teams. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/93 "2014-06-05T19:48:29Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > To be fair, the “zombie ugly” remark appears to have been a poor attempt at a zombie thread joke … Is there any other kind? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/94 "2014-06-05T19:58:20Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > But if you were organizing a neighborhood team you’d want him on it. If the guys calling actresses ugly ran across one in a bar who showed the slightest interest, I think their personal standards would “fall” low enough to go home with her. And wouldn’t be able to get to first base with her. See? A good analogy works on so many levels. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/95 "2014-06-05T20:07:05Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > To be fair, the “zombie ugly” remark appears to have been a poor attempt at a zombie thread joke, versus a real comment on her appearance. Well, the prior poster who responded to the thread reopening with “I vote ugly zombie bitch” was probably just joking about the thread status, so I didn’t quote him. But the poster who called her “zombie ugly” also said “she looks like Droopy the Dog”, so I counted that in the “real comment on her appearance” category. Mind you, I think most if not all of even the most vitriolic comments may well be intended as jokes or hyperbole to some extent (except of course for **racepug** , who apparently is just being absolutely honest about his feelings). But the fact that such vitriolic and contempt-laden insults are considered mere humorous exaggeration of an intended meaning along the lines of “well, I personally don’t find her appealing” is interesting. [QUOTE=Irishman] But I have another example of the kind of misogynist hate. There was a thread here on this board discussing musician/singers, and someone described Colbie Caillat as “that whore”, simply because they don’t appreciate her style of music. WTF gets into people? [/QUOTE] I’m not sure whether it’s “people” or just “idiom”. In the same way we’ve seen “bitches” and “hos” come to be used as neutral or nearly neutral synonyms for “women”, it may be that phrases like, say, “she’s an ugly fucking nasty cunt” have come to be seen as neutral or nearly neutral variants on “she’s not my type” or “I don’t really like her performance style”. Yeah, I have no problem with calling that type of talk fundamentally sexist and/or misogynistic. But I doubt that most of the people who use it are really intending it in a sexist or misogynistic way. It’s just a currently fashionable style of slang. ---
**Author:** ![Aquadementia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aquadementia/32/555_2.png) [@Aquadementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquadementia)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/96 "2014-06-05T20:17:31Z")
Sometimes there will be four women in a commercial. Three of them will be very attractive and one will be drop dead gorgeous. Then the drop dead gorgeous woman will get the least screen time or they will obscure her so you maybe only get one good look at her. So I’m stuck looking at very attractive women and that somehow is a ripoff. ARRRG! Also, they keep wasting time by showing the product in the commercial. I was never going to buy that anyways. > [@Small\_Hen](#): > > Hard for me to say, since I’m not a man, but several men in this thread are claiming a problem with suspension of disbelief. I guess I can understand that. From a woman’s point of view, watching, for example, “As Good as it Gets,” I could not fathom why Hellen Hunt would end up anywhere _near_ Jack Nicholson’s character. And I may not have felt angry, but because he’s a celebrity, I felt free to add as much vitriolic color to my language as I could. Words like, “decrepit asshole” and “withered old cock” were likely. > > So, maybe it’s not so much anger as the anonymous nature of the internet, along with the subconscious belief that celebrities aren’t really _people_, anyway. I’m just glad Helen Hunt got the nude scenes in that movie instead of Jack Nicholson. He was still considered something of a sex symbol, but frankly, not the kind anyone wants to see naked. Although, now that I think about it, if you switch their scenes it would have been a hundred times funnier. Greg Kinnear getting his artist muse back after spying Jack in the tub. Then Helen being mad about it when she finds out and Jack getting on his high horse that she has no business telling him who he can pose nude for. And then there would have been the scene when Jack shows up at her door in nothing but a thin pair of shorts, soaking wet from the rain. ---
**Author:** ![racepug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@racepug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racepug)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/97 "2014-06-05T20:18:45Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I just don’t see what you are seeing as anger. I would not say **racepug** seemed angry until his post was ridiculed. I’m not saying he was being rational, but anger just isn’t what I got from that post. The exaggeration is so great that I read it more as comic hyperbole. Those are the types of comments I’d expect by reviewers at TWOP (may it rest in peace). > > I have seen anger involved in this sort of thing, but it’s usually in the form of being mad at other people for daring to find person X to be attractive. **But more often I think it’s about proving how much better you are than these other people.** > > Well, that combined with the simple fact that celebrities are on a different scale. Just like there’s Hollywood Fat, there’s Hollywood Ugly. There are plenty of actresses I’d date in a heartbeat that I would not say are attractive for actresses. Personally I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m “better” than those people because I don’t find the likes of Uma Thurman, Sara Jessica Parker, or Julia Roberts attractive. But I certainly don’t go along with the crowd on the perceptions of those people, either. And yeah, there’s some hyperbole attached to my comments about those people earlier. But I meant what I typed. At least part of the reason why those people are celebrities is supposed to be because of their looks. I feel I can go to my local grocery store and find several women better looking than any of them and without having to try very hard to do so. ---
**Author:** ![racepug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@racepug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racepug)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/98 "2014-06-05T20:23:17Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > How about sour grapes? Poor, mediocre little man knows attractive women wouldn’t give him a moment of their time, so he fumes and works up a hate and pre-emptively rejects them before they can reject him! Sad little king with an imaginary harem. That’s one way of interpreting it. But I’m WAAAAAY past believing that women find me unattractive. I know better, now. So in all honesty I feel like women like the aforementioned ones would be the ones missing out if we were ever in the same room together and then didn’t “hook up.” And I wouldn’t be feeling sorry for them in the least. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/99 "2014-06-05T20:28:25Z")
Gosh, you sound awesome! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934/100 "2014-06-05T20:31:11Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Men getting together with women way younger than them is depressingly common in broadcast media, I agree. But the films/TV shows don’t usually act as if those men are unusually handsome when they’re not. They don’t even need to act like the men are all that handsome. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unattractive-celebrities-u-mad-bro/689934.md?page=6)