What's the Big Deal? (make up for week of 03/09/09)

I've been thinking a lot about the article we read called Beauty and the Patriarchal Beast earlier in the semester. I found myself getting really annoyed at the article the more I read through it because, while it made a valid point, I feel like it really never considered the other side of it. It discussed the idea of mismatched couples on popular television sitcoms in which the husband is overweight, unattractive, and undesirable while the wife is attractive and intelligent. It makes the point that these women could clearly find better looking husbands but that, due to male dominance being a subliminal message in these shows, these women are essentially stuck with their ugly husbands. I agree with this article to a certain point. However, mismatched couples are not really a new idea. Take a look at Fred Flintstone and Wilma. Or how about, in the Disney movie Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo and Esmeralda? Even Fred and Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy could be considered mismatched. The part that is sort of irritating is that maybe these shows are not promoting male dominance in that they can be ugly while still keeping hot wives, but that their wives accept them based on other things purely not physical. Or maybe their husbands' appearances are attractive to them for beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. The women on these shows never seem unhappy in their marriages aside from the typical bickering of the average married couple. Maybe the women are happy with their husbands, regardless. None of the shows mentioned in the article ever make a statement that these women were forced to marry thei ugly husbands; it was a choice. If they wanted someone better looking, they could've married someone better looking. I just don't see what the big deal is.