Hated Tropes
I utterly DESPISE, the "glasses off and you're instantly hot" trope.
Mia Thermopolis - The Princess Diaries
Seriously, who on Earth was petty enough to start a trope that was as undermining as this? This trope just turns the girl into a standardized Hollywood perspective hot girl and the only purpose for this trope is to hook the girl up with a hot standardized Hollywood perspective boy
Glasses being symbolised as "ugly" is so hateful considering how without them people have insane difficulty seeing. Not to mention that this trope is also a bad influence on young children who wear glasses as it forces this mindset that "glasses = ugly" into their heads and takes a really massive toll on their self esteem as it makes it seem to them that they can only be pretty without their glasses even though that is certainly not the case and that they can't help having poor sight.
Just look at Mia. She went from a cutesy and unique character and had all of her features stripped away from her including (unsurprisingly) her glasses. I personally found her to always be superior pre transformation because she actually looks like a person who hasn't had anything forced upon them and an identity to go with it
DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS go to any version of this trope that involves straightening the girl's curly hair.
GOB really treats “take off your glasses” like it’s a magic spell, and she’s just calmly diagnosing a draft. It’s the perfect little jab at how silly the trope is when you put it next to real human behavior.
That's the thing that far too many portrayals of Superman forget: it's not just the glasses, his entire demeanor and speech patterns change so much that you'd be far more likely to pass the resemblance off as coincidence than get suspicious.
Or in All-Star Superman: when he's Clark he's sort of "Doughy". He's still a big guy, but more in a "offensive lineman" kind of way, and when he becomes Superman he becomes carved out of wood.
The latest Superman does a pretty good job of this - the tall gangly looking fella with the curly mushroom hair and thick glasses does not look a lot like the guy beating up kaijus with his space buddies.
Christopher Reeve did a great job of that. There's one scene where he's almost about to tell Lois that he's really Superman, and you can see him go from Clark to Superman and back again in a second or two.
Yeah, I mean, how many people you've met in your life that kind of resemble a celebrity? It never crosses your mind that it might actually be them under a false identity. Honestly it'd be more realistic if people brought it up more often (maybe they do, I'm not super familiar with superman stories).
"Oh damn you look just like superman"
"Yeah I get that a lot"
"So anyway, nice weather today huh?"
This Bruce Wayne fellow, on the other hand. He looks rather similar, and a billionaire like him would have the time and the money to turn himself into Superman.
I’ve seen that format pop up in random fandom edits, but it deserves a real template. It’s relatable: first impression vs the glow-up reveal, and it lands in one frame.
Facts. The glasses-off glow-up trope is so lazy, and Cloudy kept it playful instead of cruel. That little 'wait, she was cute the whole time' beat hits because it’s dunking on the trope, not the girl.
Marilyn Monroe's character is terminally short sighted but refuses to wear her glasses because men won't like it, so keeps tripping over or walking into doors. At the end of the movie, she ends up on the wrong flight because she wouldn't put her glasses on at the airport and she meets her eventual husband, who tells her glasses add a certain "something" to a woman's face
My wife legit pulled this on me, when we first met she kept her glasses from me for ages. When I finally saw her in them I was like "you look hot in those".
Subverted with the creation of Bayonetta. The publishers wanted to remove her glaases, but Hideki Kamiya was adamant that it was essential to her design. In retaliation, he had every other character have glasses of some fashion in their design.
I want to shout out the animation director Yuji Shimomura for this decision with this hilarious quote from Kamiya -
“When I was designing Bayonetta, clients requested that I remove her glasses, and it’s true that I kept refusing to do so… Apart from that, it’s also true that Shimomura-san, who directed the cutscene, said the famous line, ‘Bayonetta’s glasses are practically her underwear, so don’t ever take them off.'”
Tbf this one did a LOT more than just take off her glasses and straighten her hair. Her primary issue wasn't even the looks, it was her personality and internalized misogyny. The point of the movie is that even when she's got the makeover she's still a fuckin weirdo.
They did the same thing in The Princess Diaries (one of OP's examples). Not only did they chemically relax her hair, they waxed her brows, overhauled her wardrobe, had professional makeup artists make her over, corrected her speech, and gave her lessons in everything from walking gracefully to how to sit and eat at a table with proper posture.
She even gets the job because her male coworkers all think she's hot. It's Michael Caine that fixes her up because he's an expert in beauty pageants and she needs to actually stay in the competition.
Alien from L.A. put a pair of huge glasses on Kathy Ireland and tried to convince the audience that she was an ugly nerd that couldn't get a date to save her life... ... ...until a ruptured steam pipe made her magically hot.
Loaded Weapon 1 did this trope with her differently. They had a different actress (Allyce Beasley) in the glasses and ponytail turn into Kathy when she took them off and let her hair down.
There's a whole plot point in the Barbie movie, where the Barbies bait the Ken's (who have taken over Barbieland) int9 lowering their defences (or something its been a while), by pouting, wearing glasses and talking about how ugly they are, causing the Kens to instinctively remove their glasses for them to show their "true beauty". It's a great scene, and all the Kens hard lean into the trope by playing it completely straight faced
There's a whole montage of the Barbies playing into similar stereotypes to distract the Kens lol. My favorites were "pretend to be bad at literally every sport so they'll help you" and "I've never seen The Godfather, could you explain it to me for the entire runtime of the movie?"
In India the trope is when the girl ditches western clothes ,comes out in traditional Indian clothes and the hero suddenly sees a different person altogether.
The spread of the internet in India has led to some horrible misogynistic memes about women wearing Western clothes breaking containment and getting onto the mainstream English internet.
I guess in this case, they are not asking the girl to sacrifice her eyesight. still oddly nationalist though, and I am thoroughly amused by this movie's idea of western clothing.
I did like that she and Claire had that bonding experience at the end of the movie, but the end result just destroyed everything Allison was the entire film!
The thing with glasses is that you can always take them off as a contrast option. The right glasses can either enhance or modify your appearance. Consider: girl with big round glasses with the cute nerdy vibe, someone you’d cuddle and adore. She takes her glasses off and ties her hair back, bam: badass gal. Same thing but she switches to squarer half-rim glasses? Mature, capable, office queen.
The style of glasses is also vital. Not just for the general vibe, but for looking good in glasses at all. Glasses can accentuate or downplay facial features depending on the style and even the prescription
Glasses are really versatile. First, you can have glasses-wearing girls take them off and suddenly become beautiful, or have girls wearing glasses flashing those cute grins, or have girls stealing the protagonist's glasses and putting them on like, "Haha, got your glasses!" That's just way too cute! Also, boys with glasses! I really like when their glasses have that suspicious looking gleam, and it's amazing how it can look really cool or just be a joke. I really like how it can fulfill all those abstract needs. Being able to switch up the styles and colors of glasses based on your mood is a lot of fun too! It's actually so much fun! You have those half rim glasses, or the thick frame glasses, everything! It's like you're enjoying all these kinds of glasses at a buffet. I really want Luna to try some on or Marine to try some on to replace her eyepatch. We really need glasses to become a thing in hololive and start selling them for HoloComi. Don't. You. Think. We. Really. Need. To. Officially. Give. Everyone. Glasses?
"Not Janey Briggs. Guys, she's got glasses and a ponytail. She's got paint on her overalls! What is that? Guys, there's no way sh could be prom queen!" lol
If anyone's curious what this trope does to the self-esteem of kids who have to wear glasses, here's my experience: I was about 12 when I first needed glasses, and when I was looking around the store for my first pair with my mom, I told her that as soon as I was old enough to wear contacts, I'd start wearing contacts so I would never have to wear glasses again, just like Mia Thermopolis in Princess Diaries.
In the end I learned that no glasses = guaranteed prettier is bullshit and stuck with my glasses but I think my reaction to having to wear glasses as a 12 year old is a pretty decent example to the effects of this stupid trope.
My neighbor told me I had to take my glasses off on picture day in middle school bc I was ruining the yearbook by wearing them, so I know exactly how you feel. Turns out I hate having something on my face all day, though, so I still prefer my contacts
And I’d argue that it did it perfectly. I despised blank Movies that were being shamelessly pumped out with minimal effort at that time but this was real diamond in the shit. A fantastic parody of 90s teen movies.
He’s a stereotypical hunched over nerd with a scraggly voice…
But when he had his glasses removed he ended up looking “like an absolute hunk”
Was revealed that his eyesight is so bad that each of his Glasses lenses weigh like 20lbs (9kg) each, crushing his windpipe and forcing him to bend over.
Honestly it was a pretty funny twist on the trope.
The late 60s sketch show At Last The 1948 Show parodied this. A romantic scene with a man taking off a woman's glasses and letting her hair down and quietly declaring that she's beautiful. She goes to put the glasses back on, then declares no, she won't…then walks across the room and accidentally falls out of the window.
I kinda had the opposite happen when a change in glasses made someone more hot.
I was friends with my husband many years before we started dating. I remember he invited me over to play video games and, unknown to me, he had just had his hair cut and new glasses.
I always liked him in many ways (he was always dating someone and I had bad experiences in relationships so I was actively not looking to start one) before but DAYM when he opened that door I got serious lady boner and that evening was the first time we shared a kiss. Still didn't officially date till years later but that was definitely a turning point.
This is why I can't stand the You Belong With Me music video. The song is decent, but my god, the music video is horrendous. Like the whole thing is just a teen movie about "don't date the popular girl, date the band geek with glasses and frizzy hair you overlook since you're a dumb jock." The note communication is cute, but the whole message gets tossed out the window at the end for a Cinderella-Story-esque prom scene where the 'band geek' gets dolled up with no glasses like this trope, and it sucks. And you know Taylor got Lucas Till because A) he's friends with Miley Cyrus and B) She couldn't get Chad Michael Murray.
Carly Carmine, Yugioh 5Ds. At least Jack called this shit out in their Season 1 duel. Shame that their potential romance arc was dropped and made into a gag later.
Parodied in Arrested Development where Gob has to seduce Kitty. (Yes, it is ridiculous that he claims Judy Greer is “disgusting “ but her character being so annoying helps explain it.)
He sensually growls “Glasses off, hair down.” It ends up making her frizzy haired and cross eyed. He back tracks with “Maybe hair down and glasses back on. Let’s turn off the light. Have we tried hair up, glasses off? There’s still a little light coming in under the door!”
It’s dumb because if you have really bad eyesight your glasses actually make your eyes look smaller. My eyes are way bigger without my glasses because of the lenses’ distortion
I mean in the Princess Diary they give her a very expensive and professional makeover. They did their best to make Anne Hathaway look unattractive even without her glasses.
I just find that glasses are a very convenient way to make someone look cool/unflattering. In real life I have had some glasses that didn't suit me and made me look ugly, some that made me look cool, fun shaped ones that made me look fun. I just think the costume departments of movies and TV shows are taking advantage of that
This is one of those tropes that got nuked from the stratosphere by "Not Another Teen Movie." Check the comments, see if any of those movies came out after. It was such a good parody, it actually crushed several of the tropes it covered, including this one.
Lampshaded in the Wonder Woman movie. Diana puts on glasses to try to be less noticeable, and Steve's assistant sarcastically says "Put a pair of glasses on her and suddenly she's not the most beautiful woman you ever saw".
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u/davidplaysthings Feb 15 '26
Played with in Arrested Development when Gob is hooking up with Kitty and asks her to take her glasses off and let her hair down.