This whole idea of "pulling the glasses off a girl and boom she's beautiful" is just plain stupid. It's this moment in time, usually in a movie, where a girl's glasses are taken off and BOOM: she's unrecognizable from who she was. Most of these types of scenes occur while the character is in high school/at some fancy school dance (usually prom). As someone who wears glasses, there are literally so many things wrong with this portrayal of a character. It's the portrayal of a character that, just because she wears glasses, she'll never win the guy, or be the prettiest or do something successful in her life that isn't portrayed as nerdy or geeky.

Here's my problem: it just isn't realistic and it isn't fair.

If you are still unsure of what I'm referring to, it's those moments in movies, usually while the characters are in high school, where girls are portrayed as weak, nerdy and less attractive because of their glasses and at the lowest level of the high school hierarchy. There are two movies in particular that come to mind: "She's All That" and "The Princess Diaries."

I mean, SURE, we're supposed to learn these lessons and take notes from that "transformation" moment. Hollywood sets up all these plot continuations about "saving the guy from going out with the ugly girl" or "beauty is less important than character development" (This I get. It is important.) However, the way Hollywood goes around developing and moving through these types of plots is just wrong. This aspect of movies is wrong. It sets up women (and possibly others) for disappointments - disappointments in terms of just by taking off your glasses, you'll become gorgeous and life will get better and you'll get the guy and blah blah blah. NO, that is NOT what happens.

Beauty starts when confidence begins. I won't go into the stereotypical, "You gain beauty from accepting who you are" type of whatever. You can't expect to find what you want in life by removing your glasses or whatever blurry image is blocking your real view of who you are (a message that I'm sure movie creators want to send to their audiences, but who really knows, right?)

Real life is hard and in having your own moment of the "taking off the glasses and revealing a beautiful girl hiding behind them" starts from not looking at Hollywood. It starts by realizing that when Hollywood does that, it creates a stigma, a stigma towards women who wear glasses and beauty standards that seemingly never end in their overly high expectations and being someone who's seen as a "dork" or a "geek" or even a "nerd". It's literally a label where other people make fun of someone because they're threatened by another's intelligence, or maybe they're just cruel and stupid.

While a "pull off the glasses" moment probably won't happen to anyone in real life because while it's just so unrealistic, it causes a stigma that labels those who are different for really stupid reasons, like their intelligence. While the portrayal of female characters dealing with this plot point doesn't entirely happen all that much, this doesn't mean that they're not important to address. It is a stupid and unrealistic ideal among many that women seem to have to deal with. A pair of glasses doesn't change the way a person looks - sure, it can impact it, but it doesn't fully change what a person's physical characteristics are. But also, no one is ever truly fully unrecognizable with or without them.

THIS just doesn't happen.

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