Hollywood literally cannot tell a “looks don’t matter” story without sneaking the looks (or status) back in by the third act. The Beast turning into a generic prince. She’s All That spends ninety minutes insisting personality matters, then resolves it with a makeover. The Princess Diaries goes one further: “you’re fine as you are” turns out to mean “you’re fine as you are, also you’re secretly a princess.”

I don’t think the people writing these endings believe the lesson themselves. An industry that runs on headshots and red carpets isn’t positioned to sell “looks don’t matter” with a straight face, and that disbelief leaks into the third act. Shallow people writing a story about looking past shallowness was always going to end with someone getting hot again. What bugs me is that they sell this corrupted message to our kids, repeating the cycle.