When Bad Things Happen to Pretty People

I've been reading another good book (or rather a good series) lately: The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer *WARNING: SPOILER ALERT*. Now don't get me wrong; I really do enjoy this book, but I find the heroine, Bella, a difficult character with whom to empathize. In this book is a girl who thinks she is pretty plain, but for some reason nobody seems to have gotten the memo. She has to turn down 3 dates to a school dance, simply because she doesn't want to go. It's a rough life. Then she finds a vamipre AND a werewold who are both in love with her. The bad news just keeps on coming. Not only is she beautiful to humans, but even other species find her irresistable because apparently she smells good. Boy, and I though I had problems. The story of a beautiful damsel in distress is a tale as old as time (pun intended): Sleeping BEAUTY, BEAUTY and the Beast, Snow White (FAIREST in the land), the list goes on. Disney and all other movie-producing companies have yet to make a movie about a homely girl who has good things happen to her without her being transformed into a pretty girl first (She's All That, Never Been Kissed, Cinderella, The Princess Diaries). Disney especially tries to address the concept that someone who is not pretty can still have good things happen to him/her, however they fail miserably. The Beast (Beauty and the Beast) has someone to love him when he's a monster, but he conveniently gets transformed into a "handsome" prince (not the most attractive prince in my opinion, but I'm not really a fan of long hair). Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame doesn't get the girl. She goes for the captain of the guard with all his rippling muscles and flowing blonde hair, but at least Quasi makes some friends, which is all he should hope for as a hideously deformed bell ringer, right? As Quasimodo laments "No face as hideous as my face was ever meant for heaven's light". Disney seems to hint at their own opinions while remaining subtly tongue-in-cheek. Of course one cannot blame them for producing movies about beautiful people. As they themselves say in the introduction to Beauty and the Beast "...for who could ever learn to love a beast?" And no, I don't mean a really pretty girl hidden behind glasses, a unibrow, and a bad haircut; I mean an honest-to-goodness average person who would never have to suffer the awful embarassment of having to turn away multiple dates to the prom, or even having a date to the prom. Today's media seems to emphasize the truth from which so many average joes try to escape: if you are pretty enough, good things will happen to you.