209 – Rival
Marie-Lune De Maisonneuve. You can’t get more Montreal than that.
If you can’t tell, I hate this trope too, and “She’s all That” is probably my most hated movie of all time. Just after “AVP : Requiem”, but that’s for a whole different reason.
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inb4 making the girls less beautiful when they remove their glasses, talk about subverting that trope.
I kinda do that, I know. ^^;
I really hope this war of hers would be civilized, like punching in the face sort of thing. Not that nasty I’ll-make-a-youtube-videoresponse-about-your-stream business.
We’ll see! :)
I guess you could say…”She’s all that!” ….I think that’s the right movie.
I did mention it in the description! :)
The last time that Glasses Gotta Go trope was popular, there were still active business mainframes that were still needed to be programmed with punch cards.
The trope is still around, but on the other hand, the “Meganekko” trope has been gaining popularity dramatically thanks to anime. Not that I’m complaining; brains + beauty = very sexy to me, and a cute girl in a nice set of glasses is a bit of a turn-on for a lot of people, present company very much included!
It has been subverted a fair bit these days but ultimately it’s a cyclic trope going in and out of fashion.
I guess that’s the influence pop culture has on people. If glasses girls are ALWAYS depicted as the ugly duckling in everything you watch, then you probably won’t like glasses girls, but if they’re depicted in a better way, (like the Japanese meganekko you mentioned), then the stigma will go away.
Guys with glasses were able to have their positive role models much earlier.
I think the ugly duckling is supposed to be the character for the audience to identify with, and thus attractive from the start, except to the other characters until the swan-all-along moment. Removing glasses is an easy noticable visual transformation that doesn’t change the actual looks of the character.
So ironically the glasses-gotta-go trope helped make girls in glasses more attractive.
As for male positive role model in glasses, there has always been Clark Kent. Oh, wait… Actually, nevermind.
I was mostly thinking of musicians like Buddy Holly, John Lennon, or Elton John (before he became Liberace 2.0)…
And there’s Harry Potter? I don’t think he’s ever seen without glasses for more than a few seconds in the entire 8-movie series.
From 7 months in the future:
Don’t forget that Peter Parker wore glasses in his original iteration.
Yeah, but at the same time as the “glasses gotta go” trope, wasn’t there also always the “sexy librarian” (with glasses) trope?
The sexy librarian usually only use her glasses in order to look above them in a sexy way, and they’re usually gone by the time anything sexy happens.
I don’t care that much if a girl look prettier with or without glasses.
if she’s pretty, she’s pretty.
and a cute glasses-girl with ponytail is so much wow! moreover if she’s wearing some metal attires, she’ll be running in my mind everyday :>
and by looking at the backgrounds, do nearsightedness only affects females in Frivolesque? :D
of it’s a yes then I know the reason why the guys there prefer the glasses-less ladies. they’re special.
Haha, that’s the weird thing in Frivolesque. Every female we’ve seen so far has glasses (except for Gaia and an unnamed tourist woman in the early strips) while no male wears them (except my brother who appears in the background of those recent strips)
But that’s not reflective of the real universe they live in. There’s probably a ton of non-glasses-girls and glasses-men who exist, but just aren’t seen in the frames of the comic where the action take place. ;)
Might not be all that different than reality. I’ve noticed that there tend to be glasses groups and non-glasses groups in the real world. So the group here seemed perfectly natural to me. In the real world it’s probably a function of how different people respond to social pressures. I even witnessed a group slowly flip from all contacts to all grasses!
It’s like smoking people hanging out with smoking people and no smokers hanging out with no smokers?
I noticed this trend everywhere.
I had been wondering the same thing about guys. But then I did spot a bespectacled guy in the background. So that was your brother. haha.
I spotted you there as well (but it took several strips before I noticed)
Yeah, that trope is so wrong. Not only glasses, but also curly hair tend to be used to depict “ugly” girls.
I’m guilty as charged here. While I don’t actually have anything against curly hair, I guess I really subconsiously prefer straight hair, and it shows in my art… It seems like I can never come up with a nice design for a curly haired girl, aside from Eleonore’s afro.
Maybe I prefer straight hair because I came of age in the late 80s back when every popular girl loved to wear a giant curly mane on her head and it was annoying? I dunno. T_T
Well, that’s just personal preference, so nothing to feel guilty about here. I favor straight hair as well (my favorite haircut being Chloe’s) and I find Afros cool, though not necessarily attractive. I just don’t like the generalization, like in The Princess Diaries movie. I guess they used it to imply a messy look.
Also for some reason I like it when hair bends forward on the sides.
I don’t know if I look better or worse without my glasses, but I know that I need them to try to learn to read people’s faces etc., (I can’t wear contacts).
Occasionally, the variant of the “girl takes her glasses off to become beautiful” trope will have her become clumsy cute without her glasses, but I’ve never seen it where she can’t really tell people’s reactions ’cause she can’t see. Fiction vs. reality.
The glasses are usually useless, and she can see perfectly fine without them. (they won’t be seen again after that point)
Anyway, in Hollywood, glasses are always of the “reading glasses” variety. You need them to introduce the character and to show that he or she is an intellectual. Then you promptly ditch then when the character leaves his book/computer/whatever, and you never see them again.
Also, you’ve been commenting a lot lately! =D
Should I stop?
It’s probably because I set my browser to open Frivolesque everyday just for whatever hits/views etc. that would generate. I just wish you had the time to make new strips everyday. And you have the nicest fan base here of the many I read. That speaks volumes about how good your work is.
No, quite the contrary! :)
I’m glad you’re here.
I also wonder who you are. Is the “lesque” in your name only because of Frivolesque?
Yes. It just seem to fit perfectly here. I use a different name in each of the few places I comment. Who am I? I am a fool, a genius, the doer of the impossible, oblivious to the obvious, and the elbow in every crowd scene of the person afraid to be seen. :-)
So secretive… I’d love to chat with you one of these days.
Hides elbow too!
The fictional trope we’ve been discussing here says: “Take off the glasses/mask you’re hiding behind and everything will be great”.
But my real world insecurity hears: “Eew! Put it back! Put it back!” :)
Aw. Well, if the insecurities aren’t too much to bear, drop me a line sometimes. I like to get acquainted with my regular commenters. :)
I would have LOVED a scene in RVP: Requiem where the Predator takes off newly appeared glasses and undoes a ponytail and looks like one of the most beautiful looking actresses in the world… After all, that couldn’t have f#$%ed the movie up anymore.
I’m thinking of predicting the gender of unborn babies.
How about putting a girl from a Tribal society in Frivolesque.
Y’know, I hate that trope, too, but I did still like Princess Jellyfish…
Please don’t hate me. D:
I’d never hate you!
I could never get into Princess Jellyfish (the whole “MAKEOVER!” deal is such a turn off for me) but Delphine’s friends ARE inspired by the girls from the show.
I think one of the best parts of Princess Jellyfish was that when they took off her glasses… she couldn’t freakin’ SEE anything!
Are there any Frivolesque readers who are with child right now if so I would like to predict the gender of their unborn babies.
You could just make a prediction regardless.
I predict that the next child (if any) of the whoever reads this will be a girl, and she’ll wear glasses and look great doing so.
How did the expression Guys Don’t make Passes At Girls Who Wear glasses come about anyway?
One would assume that it came from Dorothy Parker’s personal experience. (Although, other than in one photograph from later in her life, there’s scant evidence that she actually wore them.)