Looks like a controversy to me!

April 23, 2005 · by sudhishkamath

Yesterday I watched Shallow Hal again.

Yes, it has to be among the most insensitive movies ever made. But to be honest, I found it wickedly funny, except for the mushy feel-good end.

I know it’s politically incorrect to laugh at fat people, I know “beauty is only skin-deep” and all those politically correct things people say to make ugly people feel good! He he! Awrite, I was kidding! Seriously, I was kidding and you know I’m kidding cuz I am not like a Greek God myself (Er… ummm… actually I could be… if you gimme a few weeks … a little working out at the gym should do the trick. Or gimme a few minutes, a little working on PhotoShop could do it too).

But the point here is that I don’t think one should feel bad about saying politically incorrect things as long as it’s just said for the sake of humour. I mean the world will be such a boring place to live in if no one ever took a dig!

The problem I had with Shallow Hall is the politically correct ending. Hal finally ends up with that incredibly obese woman who he thought was like the slim and slender Gwyneth Paltrow!
Throughout the movie, the Farelly brothers make fun of fat and aesthetically challenged people, depict them in the most graphically, unflatteringly unattractive way possible and in the end do a unconvincing half-hearted volte face and want us to believe exactly the contrary.

In fact, it is the politically correct end which makes the movie appear very pretentious and hypocritical.

All they had to do was make the fat girl dump Shallow Hal and go back to her ex-boyfriend. So Hal would’ve learnt his lesson and maybe rebound on his neighbour (who happens to be hawt too!)… that would’ve made for a more honest ending, even if it was politically incorrect for him to end up with an attractive woman.

I don’t see why the audience wouldn’t have bought that! The Farelly Brothers did make fun of mentally ill people in Dumb and Dumber, they made fun of the blind boy in the same film when they con the blind boy into buying a dead parrot!

We have come to expect the Farelly Brothers to say the most politically incorrect things and to their credit, they do a super job of that! So why try and con the world into believing that beauty is only skin deep?

Discussing this movie with colleagues brought me to another discussion, thanks to my affinity in using the words ‘hawt chicks’ in every other sentence.

Are looks important?
Why are most men particular about “hawt chicks?”

Hmmm! Well, to answer that question for Sudhish Kamath, I will have to submit the following. My client picked up the words ‘hawt chicks’ after having watched the movie ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ The way these words are used so often in the movie makes the whole usage wickedly funny. My client Sudhish picked up the usage ever since and has been using the terminology to refer to anyone from Mirabai to Mother Teresa! (Basically hawt chicks have been rounded off to women in general… Anyone who’s known me knows that the women I refer to as ‘hawt chicks’ aren’t exactly the ones you would find on the cover of Cosmopolitan or even Kiran TV for that matter and nor has any of my romantic interests over the last two years been over five foot one inch!).

Back to the question: Are looks important?

To answer that on a more general level, men only say they dig ‘hawt chicks’ just like how women say they need the Tall, dark, handsome hunk. Leching is an entirely different game. For every guy leching at Yana Gupta’s tender thighs in the Babuji number, there is a girl lusting after Brad Pitt’s thunder thighs in Troy!

Yet, are men more superficial than women? Difficult to say, but giving the girls the benefit of doubt, I would dare say they can be quite superficial sometimes.

It doesn’t matter what they look like, they will go behind the prettiest girl in the class with religious commitment to profess their love for her! It’s this rather mysterious yet much-abused concept called ‘Love at first sight’! And there are actually women in this world who’ve bought that kinda shit too!

I, for one, do not believe in love at first sight. Or let’s just say I do believe in it, only that I prefer to call it something else. It’s called Lust.

And, lust aint a bad word at all!

Men do it. Women do it.

And some times, it is the lust that often triggers off the attraction. That being the case, who dare ask: Why are looks considered that important?

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Looks like a controversy to me!

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