The Archetype of the Plain Girl

Also acceptable.

The Plain Girl is a common archetype in romances. The archetype has been done well, but I generally find it somewhat tiresome. 

To get the acceptable treatment out of the way, Mary Balogh's First Comes Marriage presents a plain girl as the primary female protagonist. The heroine has been told all her life how plain she is; instead of moping about, she adopts a pleasant and happy attitude. But after her marriage, a few incidents leave her feeling insecure. Finally, her husband says (I'm paraphrasing), "Look, I'm attracted to you. That should be enough. Let it go!" And she does!

Now, for the unacceptable: 

[T]he human race is broadly divided into

angels & trolls...the angels don't always get the

best of it; when [they] fall in love with each

other, they'd better be sure it's not because

they're beautiful people. When my wife and I

fell in love in 1953, we were both pretty ugly

customers. That's how we knew it was real.

1. She doesn't let it go.

One of the admirable aspects of manga is that despite the presence of enormous self-doubt, the resolution--quite often--is for the protagonists to get over it. 

That is, their self-doubt is a problem that others are NOT expected to solve. In Cherry Magic, Adachi's ability to read minds doesn't send him into a state of constant self-affirmation. Rather, it propels him to meet Kurosawa half-way.

Books where the heroine (or hero) is constantly being reassured result in a kind of  perpetual victimhood.

2. The plain heroine is paired with a handsome hunk, and the writer never lets us forget it.

What I dislike about this motif is that the authors don't play fair. There's a double standard at work where the heroine should be accepted for herself (her intrinsic character!) while she and every other character in the book continually comments on the handsomeness of the hunk: ooh, his rock-hard abs. Isn't she lucky that he loves her for her soul while she gets to love him for his body?!

Poor handsome hunk. (I have encountered the opposite--men who honestly seem to believe that they are owed a beautiful female companion because that is what men are wired to want; I generally don't feel bad for the women because I think they often know what they are signing up for. But I don't envy them.) 

I prefer romance books, where appearance is a non-issue because (1) the hero and heroine are both plain; (2) because the hero and heroine are both good-looking; (3) because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (people have individual and sometimes wacky tastes). In any case (and this applies to real life as well), everybody just shuts up about it and gets on with the plot.

I do find it notable that traditional romances and, for that matter, lesbian romances, fret about the female protagonist's appearance far more than male/male romances. In male/male romances, even if one male is supposedly plain, the issue almost always falls into #3 above. 

The reason is not because the physical has been abstracted. Quite the opposite! Attraction matters. So does sexual compatibility. Returning to the Plain Girl trope, women and attractiveness is a common topic throughout history and in literature. The need to explain (sometimes, defensively) the writer's choices is understandable if unfortunate. 

It does begin to wear. As mentioned above, the male/male romances I read generally solve the problem by physical passion coming down to "that's what I want" (see Ruin of a Rake above). If one wants an explanation for why so many women read the stuff...