Please don’t pretend Alison Brie isn’t pretty
The show: GLOW, Season 1, Episode 2 The moment: “The pretty one”
Sam (Marc Maron) coaches a women’s pro wrestling team, which includes Ruth (Alison Brie), a down-on-her-luck actress.
Sam sets up a scenario: Ruth will play a home-wrecker who destroys her best friend’s marriage. As Ruth circles another woman in the ring, he narrates, “She’s a horrible person who doesn’t deserve to live . . . She has nothing. No man, no love, no friends. Her hair is brown, the colour of s---.”
After practice, Ruth confronts Sam in the parking lot: he wasn’t talking about her character, was he? He was talking about her.
“You’re chum, you’re blood in the water,” he tells her. “Everyone is going to hate you.”
“I don’t want everyone to hate me!” she wails.
“The caring. The desperation,” he sneers.
“That’s what makes you unbearable. I don’t like you. Try not giving a f---. There’s a lot of power in that.”
Throughout the first two episodes, people keep saying to Ruth things like, “I don’t want you, I want the pretty one.” It makes me scream. I ask you, showrunner Liz Flahive ( Nurse Jackie) and everyone who makes television: If you cast someone as attractive as Alison Brie, why oh why do you write scripts that call her unattractive?
I get the point: women are judged by their looks. But can we not express that in a more honest way?
What about saying, “Some women mistrust Ruth because she’s pretty”? Or “Sam belittles Ruth because he’s attracted to her”?
If your story forces you to pretend that a gorgeous actress isn’t, please, please, write a different story. GLOW streams on Netflix, starting Friday. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.