what's with the ugly guys plus hot women couples?

jennifer aniston found vince vaugn good looking enough.. oh, and everyone isn't as superficial as you.

This trend has been happening for a very long time. Go back to movies in the 50's and 60's and you'll see a lot of couple pairings which are even more extreme, with men in their 50's with a bit of gray being paired with women in their 20's.

The big shift that has occurred over the last couple of decades is that the leading men went from being well groomed and charming men to being "everyman" who has a bit of weight and is often more a comedian than the traditional Hollywood star leading man.

Where is this coming from? Marketing data. Over many decades marketing experts have studied the how consumers respond to different media images and one combination that they have seen succeed has been the everyman + the hot woman.

Pay attention to TV commercials and sit-coms from the 90's and the 2000's and you'll see this trend lock into place. The man in the commercial is more realistic looking, having a bit of weight, aged somewhere in the 30's or 40's and tends to have a funny personality or is in some way a man-child. The woman is always in their 20's or 30's, thin, trim but mature and collected.

As another poster pointed out, the man is the comedy element and the woman is the "strait-man" in the pairing. The guy gets to whine, be lazy, or in some other way allude to some element of immaturity, while the woman is the put together and collected person that has to react to the guy's immaturity.

Then there is the looks area. Our society doesn't judge men on their looks nearly to the degree that women are judged. In this pairing the man's personality is the important factor, and his looks are meant to be more realistic and relatable to the audience. The men tend to be the ones that have the most character development, needing to learn something about growing up, becoming the mature man who does the right thing.

The woman's role is to react to this and in a certain way be the target for the man's arch. She's already matured and grown up. She's put together and ready to move along with life and doesn't need to learn nearly as much as the man. So she just has to react to the man character and basically wait for him to come around.

Now, the real controversial part. The marketing data points to the fact that women do not, on a broad consumer level, want to see fat, realistic or ugly women. That probably doesn't sound good to a lot of people, but in terms of marketing products to people the numbers show in terms of products sold is that women want to see beautiful women.

So you end up with a formula where the average man wants to see beautiful in shape women, and the average woman wants to see beautiful in shape women and that means women who are realistic or otherwise not in the upper tiers of shape and looks just don't get these roles.

You have exceptions, Rosanne, Rosie O'Donnel, etc. The general trend though here is that these women are comedians by trade. They've been able to make it through their pesonality via being funny, but these tend to be isolated exceptions and not the rule.

Now is any of this good, isn't this sexist? Well, yeah, there are many problems with this trend. However it is complicated because it is driven by many different factors. It isn't merely a patriarchal society gone amok. You have biological hard wiring going on (our brains prefer to see good looking people rather than ugly people). And it is also driven by basic commerce. If you want to sell something to as many people as possible then the average guy/hot woman combo works. Whether people are being reflective of it or not, the masses respond positively to this pairing.

Is it good for society as a whole? Probably not.

I would not call these guys ugly, but yea, there is a total double standard in Hollywood. Guys can be average or unattractive, but women have to have smokin hot bodies. If this was reality, those guys would have wives with love handles, cellulite, and wrinkles. They would be as normal as the guys.

Malkatraz! Masheen!

Hollywood has an obsession with pairing average and/or homely men with highly attrractive women. (IE; Knocked Up, Superbad, any other Judd Appatow movie, The Hangover, Sideways, and so on) Whereas this does happen in real life, nor am I shallow enough to believe attractive people should only ever date other attractive people, but it's getting ridiculous at this point especially when you're pairing an overweight, balding actor with a 20-something Hollywood sex symbol, or someone who regurarly makes the Hot 100 type lists (like Malin or Kristen)
And the problem wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't so sexist, as you rarely, if ever, see average or homely women paired with highly attractive men in Hollywood films.

If you'd look at the actors' bios on IMDB (you know, the website you're posting on?), you'd see that there's only 11 years difference between Jason B. and Kristen Bell, only 8 years difference between Vince V. and Malin Akerman, and Kristen Davis is actually 1 year OLDER than Jon Favreau. (No age info on Kali Hawk, so no way to know how she compares to Faizon Love.) This is hardly an example of middle-aged men with much younger wives. If eleven years difference in age seems excessive to you, well, I guess your personal choices are pretty limited.

Hollywood has ALWAYS paired older men with younger women. This is hardly the first movie to do it.

"It's better to burn out than to fade away." Neil Young

I wish the women had stretch marks or didn't wear hot Victoria Secret lingerie all the time. Where were the beige bras? Stretch marks? Hairy legs? Muffin tops? NORMALITY?

That annoyed me a bit about this otherwise entertaining movie. Men are allowed to look normal and have a personality to make up for it. Women are supposed to have a fantastic body and have the personality.

Flipping Hollywood....

----------------------------------------
Spare me your space-age technobabble, Attila the Hun!

I just saw the movie and this comment is nonsense. The movie is a comedy. Period.
And btw, I'm a less than average looking middle aged guy, overweight, bald and I have this stunning looking wife, and we're the same age!
Friends are the family that we choose

This post made me think of an old "Will and Grace" episode where Jack is glipping through tv channels saying "fat man, skinny wife, fat man skinny wife" which is obviously true for a lot of tvshows. Like "King of Queens" "Grounded for life" etc.. Also most bromance movies.