Standard rule

Imagine being the person being told: yeah, so we only hired you to challenge beauty standards. Not because you're the best at what you do, oh no no, but because you're ugly af

If you pay me her salary, you can motivate it however you want.
It looks like this picture was taken the moment they told her
Except she's absolutely gorgeous herself, as was made clear when they removed the prosthetics. None of the claim makes any sense 😂
- You could tell she was beautiful even with the prosthetics.
- I would eat a trail of **** to get to her ***** to **** the **** out of her.
To be fair, she's definitely a breakout star of the show. I believe that before Witcher she had mostly worked in theatre, and even then was new to the industry.
I don't buy it, she was amazing in season one. Season two it's hard to tell because they apparently forgot everything about her characters wants, needs, and motivations.

I'm now at a point that I can't watch American media at all because everyone just looks the fuckin same.

Generic actress no.495 with horrifyingly white teeth Vs generic actor no.5638 with horrifyingly white teeth

What's is this with the teeth? Are they all wearing fake teeth? Don't tell me everyone has such a great mouth hygiene and dental care with sugar in everything you eat in US?
- Serious answer? Yes. They often have either bleached teeth, which eventually destroys them so then they need veneers (fake front) and after that they get dentures.
- Don’t forget the wholesale smoking since they’re teenagers.
It’s even sadder when you have an actor(ess) that is beautiful in their own way and then gets surgery or something else to conform to the way everyone else looks.
- Erin Moriarty pictures just make me fucking sad.
- Case is point: the actress that was playing Starlight in "The boys"
Usually I don't notice but it was pretty jarring in Book of Boba Fett. The guy was all dusty living in a desert and then he smiles and his teeth are blindingly white. I was like.. Damn Disney you can't afford the makeup department to dirty those up a bit?
- I had the same problem with the 2018 tomb raider. Lara Crofts dad spends years surviving in a cave on an island and has perfect fucking teeth.
- Might not be any bacteria that cause tooth decay.
You prefer the yellow teeth snaggletooth actresses?
- yellow = anything less white than #FFFFFF ? god damn
- You mean the realistic teeth actresses?
  You bet your ass.
I am American and I am not offended by this. I'm not even sure I disagree

Challenge beauty standards of a character that was supposed to be unrealistically beautiful.

Was she? I could swear in the books she was described as not conventionally beautiful
- You're right. They just made her drop dead stunning in the games, so that's how the bulk of the fandom envisions her
- I'm pretty sure the whole thing is that witches in the witcher universe can shape their faces however they want so they all choose to be super pretty? Am I misremembering or did yennefer make herself "not conventionally beautiful" on purpose?
- She was ugly before she became a sorceress, if I remember correctly.

They just mean not white

Oh. I thought she was the Hollywood version of “ugly”
- Exactly
Casting director? Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's it. If you ever read casting calls they are weirdly racist from every angle

It could also really mean "Non-white for racist audiences"

I’ve still never met a man who actually won’t recognize that a hot woman from another race isn’t hot. They can be insanely racist and still call a hot black woman hot. This casting director is a moron.
Also, "not blonde" considering the typical Hollywood stereotypes.
It exactly means that.

The likely explanation is that the publication intentionally misrepresented what the casting director said. They were probably talking about how what they DID with her in the first season challenged beauty standards. They intentionally made her "ugly" for the story. The casting director might not have meant they hired her because she wasn't conventionally attractive, but the publication knew they could get more clicks by quoting her out of context.

Also, this thread has been kind of toxic about beauty stuff which makes me sad :(

I don’t understand how making her ugly, having every character call her ugly, and then making her hot and having every character recognize she’s hot challenges beauty standards.
- In the books there is very little mention of her being a hunchback. They didn't need to spend so much time it
  The witcher approached, watchful and silent. He saw her left shoulder, slightly higher than her right.
  He continued watching. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old although he preferred not to guess her real age. She moved with a natural, unaffected grace. No, there was no way of guessing what she'd been like before, what had been improved. He stopped thinking about it; there wasn't any sense.
  But he suddenly knew the truth. He knew it. He knew what she used to be.

She was actually made up to be pretty ugly for most of the first season, but they hotted her up at the end as the result of some magic shit.

I watched it once four years ago, so don’t remember the details.

Most sorceresses in that universe enhance their beauty/youthfulness with magic. Most sorcerers do not because they're taken more seriously as they age. It's essentially a commentary on what each gender derives power from. Yennefer is like 80 years old by the time the main story begins.
- It's far more simple than that. The students are predominantly nobles, and they pretty much completely cut all ties to their previous lives.
  So why would you send a hot daughter to become a witch when you can marry her and make political gains? You send the disfigured one so you don't have to waste any more money on her.
  The 5th son doesn't need to be disfigured to be essentially useless in the political world.
Even when she was made up to be ugly they couldn't bring themselves to mess with her perfect tits though. They didn't commit that much.
In the books yen uses magic to hide her hunchback and ugliness. Geralt being a Witcher and therefore trained/experienced to analyse magic in front of him quickly sees through the illusion. If the show had the character look uglier to begin with then that's probably a result of adapting the books. I haven't watched the show as I don't really like adaptations. Btw it's not just Yen that uses magic to hide ugliness either, almost all other sorceresses do as well in the books including Triss.
- Interesting, in the show it isn't really an illusion, they physically change her.
Me, being simple minded, assumed it was two different actors for hunchback-Yen and smokeshow-Yen.

I kinda get what they mean. It’s not that she’s ugly, it’s that she’s hot as fuck but doesn’t look like a generic “hot actress”

I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I don't think she's that hot.
- Your eyes broken bro
- she's a smoke show, dude

You want to challenge beauty standards? Cast Steve Buscemi as Geralt and Lizzo as Yennifer.

Wtf Steve Buscemi is hot af
There's a meme comparing him to Angelina Jolie and while I personally don't think she's hot, a vast majority of people do, ergo Steve is objectively and undeniably the most attractive man on earth.

Is this the women from Mr Robot or do I suck at faces?

Are you confusing her for Carly Chaikin?
- I was and it is now confirmed I suck at faces.
  Thanks.

It seems like a lot of people are just not reading the article or the context of the quote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/27/the-witcher-casting-director-says-yennefer-casting-was-to-challenge-beauty-standards-which-is-completely-insane/

Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. ... Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.

I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.

Emphasis is mine.

"I have non white friends"

All my friends are non white..