Top 10 Most Ridiculous Makeover Tropes
#10: A Man Knows Best
Top 10 Movie Tropes That We Expect But Still Love
Sometimes an on-screen makeover can be just outright baffling. We’ve all heard the basic story: a girl has a fully developed personality that doesn't revolve solely around her appearance. Then a boy comes along and convinces her that what she is now is not good enough, but he could help her fix it. Let’s be honest: the guy usually then proceeds to give pretty bad advice. The subsequent makeover often makes the girl look uncomfortable and not like herself. It's 2022; women don't need a man (or anyone else) to tell them what looks good. We can dress for our own gaze.
#9: Lipstick-and-Load Montage
We’ve all seen the scenes of a super serious man getting ready for his super serious mission, right? Well, the rom-com version of lock-and-load scenes are often little more than a dramatic representation of a woman simply getting ready. For most people, getting dressed up and doing your hair and makeup is somewhere between a fun thing to do and a chore that just has to get done. Though many on-screen scenes can be a little bit far-fetched, they can also make for great entertainment. And honestly, we can appreciate the glamorization of the simple everyday moments that make the main character feel like the main character, so it really depends how it’s put to screen.
#8: Changing for Popularity
Top 10 Game-Changing Hollywood Movies
We love to see a story where someone comes into their own and grows to find themselves. But the opposite is not so enjoyable. Watching the main character lose themselves for outside approval can range from cringey to straight up sad. The makeovers done for the sake of popularity often turn fun unique characters into boring carbon copies. All this just so people will like them? How outdated and boring! Especially when the character already has friends that like them as is. We think this trope can ruin a character's personality just as quickly as it does their individuality.
#7: The Conformist
Top 10 Wedding Tropes That Make NO Sense
Interesting characters deserve to stay interesting, and that is the hill we will die on. There is little worse than to get introduced to a character like Tai from Clueless - who has the potential to shake up the lives of all the characters in a pretty vanilla community - and then have the character lose their special streak to a “makeover”. The process of watching a character undergo a physical transformation can be fun, but sometimes this comes at the cost of the storyline. We want to see characters with unique personalities and their own styles, not the same character over and over again.
#6: Getting Girly
Top 10 MCU Tropes
Movies seem to think that womanhood works on a binary; you either like all things pink, frilly, and “girly”, or you act like you have never thought twice about your appearance in your life. We just want to shout, hey Hollywood, you don’t have to be obsessed with shopping to know how to brush your own hair! Girly girls don’t need to be pitted against other girls, but this trope does just that. We are here for ALL girls, women and female-identifying people that express themselves in any way that makes them happy. We are not here for them being pushed into someone else’s idea of womanhood.
#5: Losing Weight
This is not the most ridiculous trope, but we do think it is the worst. Thankfully, it is not all that common anymore. Let’s be real: whoever says weight loss is necessary for a makeover is not worth listening to. It’s the 2020s and we do not subscribe to the beauty ideals of the 2000s or earlier. For a long time, Hollywood was known for only casting almost exclusively thin people. And if they weren't skinny, they were almost never the main character. Thankfully, things are slowly changing these days. At this point, a weight loss trope is lame and outdated. If you are not a doctor, you don’t need to comment on someone's weight.
#4: All Grown Up
Top 10 Ridiculous Shark Movies
This trope can make a storyline feel complete, but it often leaves us scratching our heads. You know the one: when the main character starts the movie looking one way, then a time jump happens and suddenly they are super hot and wanted by the person they liked all along. We love it as a plot device; we don’t love it as a makeover trope. Half the time,the makeover consists of hiring a new person to play the aged character, putting the “before” version in a fat suit, or trying to convince the audience that the character underwent a huge transformation because the other characters don’t recognize them. None of these make for very good or believable transformations.
#3: Letting Your Hair Down
Rom-coms of the 2000s were known for having makeover scenes. But to Hollywood, a makeover scene often seemed to mean removing a ponytail, straightening the subject's hair, and putting on tighter clothes. Don’t get us wrong: those scenes can be entertainment gold. But come on - casting a beautiful person and trying to convince us they’re ugly because they’re wearing loose clothes? Everyone around them couldn’t see their beauty because they’re wearing a ponytail??? Not to mention the fact that curly hair is beautiful on its own and doesn't need to be made over. Honestly, the trope comes off as lazy, though we wouldn’t necessarily change every single instance of them.
#2: Beautiful All Along
Top 10 Hauntingly Beautiful Songs in Disney Movies
This trope can really go one of two ways. There are the ridiculous versions that take conventionally attractive actors and try to make them unattractive, just to make them hot again - which we previously touched upon. Then, there are the meaningful versions where a character comes to realize they don’t need to change to be their most attractive selves. The first version is usually quite unbelievable, and results in movies that make us wonder if it is really a makeover if the subject goes from one kind of beautiful to another. By contrast, the latter usually results in newly formed confidence for the character. We definitely prefer the latter.
#1: Removing Glasses
We’ve all guffawed at the idea of no one being able to recognize Superman because of his Clark Kent glasses. But not being able to see someone’s beauty because they wear glasses might be just as ridiculous. Glasses can change a face, but we don’t think they make a face unrecognizable or unattractive, like the people behind “She’s All That” want you to believe. Removing Rachel Leigh Cook’s glasses did nothing except make things more convenient for her should she want to take a dip into some water. The movie’s 2021 remake got a lot wrong, but at least their makeover scene tried a little bit harder.
