The incredible chicness of having a ugly boyfriend Ask Elle Fanning

During the Golden Globes ceremony, Elle Fanning walked the carpet in a Gucci dress adorned with colorful flowers, her long blonde hair perfectly straight down her back. By her side was her boyfriend, Gus Wenner, a business executive. The two have been dating since the fall of 2023 and seem very close. Surprisingly, the public, who usually loves these appearances, did not appreciate their couple outing. While Fanning was promoting the film Sentimental Value, her fans couldn’t help but notice what Gen Z on TikTok would now call a beauty gap. In simple terms, that he is less attractive than her, which was apparently considered an unforgivable flaw.

Elle Fanning’s boyfriend is less attractive than Elle Fanning, and now what?

Let’s start from an undeniable premise: Elle Fanning is very beautiful, Hollywood-level beautiful, far above the average people we see every day at the supermarket, office, or gym. This means that finding an equally attractive partner would already be a challenge. She would practically be almost forced to choose from among her fellow actors, singers, or models. Instead, she didn’t, she went elsewhere. Social media - where we’ve recently observed peaks of parasocial interaction so high they defy science - did not seem to approve, and memes flooded the internet. On one side, some said the actress could “do better,” absolutizing the idea and claiming that beautiful women have always settled for less attractive men. On the other side, some wanted to grab the world’s incels (and forum dwellers) by the shoulders and shout: “See? You don’t have to be tall, blonde, broad-shouldered, and blue-eyed to be loved. Women aren’t superficial!” Some claim that a man would never accept such a beauty gap, while others are convinced that dating a “less attractive” man is chic, almost like being photographed in a slouchy cashmere sweater for a deliberately casual off-duty look that suits attractive women especially well.

Why very beautiful women date “ordinary” men

Beyond this specific example, the case sparks multiple points of reflection—some valid, others not. Some argue that a man of “average” attractiveness (not above the norm we’re used to seeing on magazine pages and red carpets) is more stable and secure, a man who can support a couple without getting lost in vanity or the spotlight. This perspective, to some extent, reflects patriarchal and classist dynamics. Why must the man provide? And why does a “less attractive” man (for clarity’s sake) function better than a handsome one? Others argue that women are more attractive than men and shouldn’t settle, inadvertently validating the idea that only tall, muscular men deserve to be loved, aligning - whether consciously or not, with the manosphere and parts of the web that are best avoided, which see physical beauty (and ability) as a reflection of traditional moral values rooted in conservative and ideological ideals. And naturally, this view is superficial.

A question of depth, against any incel ideology

The truth, as always, is that social media is not real life. Even if we’ve become accustomed to daily doom scrolling and reading opinions from people who never leave the house and spend hours asking Grok to 1) rate a beautiful woman only to declare she’s “mid,” and 2) use the same AI tool to virtually undress women, the world outside is vast and expansive. People love for reasons beyond physical appearance. They love for pleasure, care, closeness, compatibility, desire, and need. People love for so many reasons (valid and invalid) that observing a couple from the outside gives almost no insight into the internal dynamics of their relationship. True, these couples do not exist in a vacuum, they are subject to intersectional power dynamics that, for example, place a trans woman in a more vulnerable position than a cis woman, or a Black woman compared to a white woman. True, men can be more superficial, and it’s true that in books and films only the beautiful love the beautiful and only the beautiful deserve the beautiful, but this is simply not the lived reality of people in the world. And it’s about time we started facing that reality, baby.