Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
Why do we even care if the character is a hero?

I mean, other than the ongoing attempts to invalidate examples...
To bring it back to why the point was brought up, and combined with not wanting to dig through lots of backend nonsense to find the original post, I believe the original argument was thus:

By and large, (aka Generally,) male heroes are fairly muscular and attractive.
Most ugly characters are either villains, or their ugliness is used as easy comedy or tragedy fodder. As in: "Haha, the joke is I'm ugly" or "it's sad because he doesn't want to be ugly but he is."

That was the original point. For every unattractive hero whose unattractiveness is not played for cheap laughs or cheap tearjerking, there are 5 or 6 who are pretty much muscular, good looking guys.

For every Benn Grimm there is a Johnny Storm, Thor, Peter Parker, and Tony Stark.
For every Wade Wilson there is a T'challa, Peter Quill, Scott Summers, and Clark Kent.

Like it or not, the same looming phantom of "beauty standards" looms over men as well. I honestly can't remember the last time a fat guy in a movie has not had his weight be the butt of several jokes in the movie. I've seen maybe 3 movies of an unattractive guy getting a hot girlfriend despite all odds (that I can think of) but there are plenty of movies/novels about "plain" women landing hot guys. (Twilight saga, Fifty Shades, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc.)
(Though, in fairness, I believe the "plain/unattractive person finding a hot soulmate" thing is a fairly universal thing in romantic fiction so... I'm kinda meh on including it.)

Have you ever been to a men's underwear isle? Every photo is some guy with abs you could grate cheese with. And no, "the underwear is saying you look like that guy when you wear the underwear" doesn't work on anyone but children. No man thinks he gains abs by wearing Fruit of the Loom. It's how you OUGHT to look. GQ sells this, Mens Fitness sells this, cologne companies, underwear, clothing companies, etc. I've seen plus-sized female models. And while I'm sure they exist somewhere, I've never in my entire life seen a plus-sized male model or a picture of one. And I shop in the big-and-tall sections. Because I'm both. Never seen someone of my body shape modelling clothes. Ever.
And, I'm not complaining. Just an interesting thought I had.

Does any of the previous make objectification of women suddenly ok? No. Only an idiot would think that. Does it mean things are probably less wildly disproportionate than believed? Probably. Still sucks for everyone, though.

Maybe, just maybe, having a pissing contest over who has it worse helps nobody compared to just... acknowledging that everyone has problems and suffers at the uncaring hand of society and we can all strive to make things better for others. Crazy, I know, but I like to think it's possible to do both.