if Vaggi and lute traded roles, would people still be calling everything the villain (Vaggi) does ‘hot,’ or is that only reserved for the white woman with the conventional nose?
Gee, that’s a good question, anon. 😄 Would Vaggi get the same treatment?
Seriously, though, it’s time people stopped tip-toeing around the facts: the reason why Vaggi doesn’t get as many passes as lute does, is because she’s a Latina with a hooked (ethnic) nose.
Yes, you can all roll your eyes and try to deny it, but it’s the truth. People are already racist as fuck towards Vaggi because of her being a Latina, but add in a hooked nose—something that is seen as undesirable, especially on a woman—and you have what I’ve seen constantly: people trashing her and bashing her in favor of lute, the white woman with the Eurocentric nose.
If the roles were actually reversed, then it’d play into the “villains being *‘ugly’/possessing *‘ugly’ features” trope that we’ve seen time and time again in media, which does more harm than good. And Vaggi would be getting bashed to an even higher degree since she actually would be a villain (that people are already treating her like). To echo someone else, it’s great to see a woman be portrayed as beautiful with an unconventional feature. It’s actually great representation to those with this feature, as well as those with this feature who may harbor hang-ups about it because of how Western beauty standards view it.
Again, some—or many—of you may roll your eyes and scroll on, ignoring everything I’ve typed (if you decided to make it this far), and that’s fine. I would like to make a point in saying that you are allowed to find lute attractive, just like I said in my older post. I’m not saying you don’t have that right, nor am I saying that everyone who likes lute and hates Vaggi does it purely because of physical reasons. My point is that a lot of people do have this bias that they refuse to acknowledge or don’t even know that they have—and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they aren’t aware of it; it’s just what they’re used to in media. Unlearning biases isn’t easy or simple, but it is possible if one chooses to do so.
*Author does not think that hooked noses or any ethnic features are ugly. She has placed the word in quotation marks to highlight the preposterous idea that these particular features are unattractive.
