Standard rule

Imagine being the person being told: yeah, so we only hired you to challenge beauty standards. Not because you're the best at what you do, oh no no, but because you're ugly af

I'm now at a point that I can't watch American media at all because everyone just looks the fuckin same.

Generic actress no.495 with horrifyingly white teeth Vs generic actor no.5638 with horrifyingly white teeth

Challenge beauty standards of a character that was supposed to be unrealistically beautiful.

They just mean not white

It could also really mean "Non-white for racist audiences"

The likely explanation is that the publication intentionally misrepresented what the casting director said. They were probably talking about how what they DID with her in the first season challenged beauty standards. They intentionally made her "ugly" for the story. The casting director might not have meant they hired her because she wasn't conventionally attractive, but the publication knew they could get more clicks by quoting her out of context.

Also, this thread has been kind of toxic about beauty stuff which makes me sad :(

She was actually made up to be pretty ugly for most of the first season, but they hotted her up at the end as the result of some magic shit.

I watched it once four years ago, so don’t remember the details.

I kinda get what they mean. It’s not that she’s ugly, it’s that she’s hot as fuck but doesn’t look like a generic “hot actress”

You want to challenge beauty standards? Cast Steve Buscemi as Geralt and Lizzo as Yennifer.

Is this the women from Mr Robot or do I suck at faces?

"I have non white friends"

It seems like a lot of people are just not reading the article or the context of the quote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/27/the-witcher-casting-director-says-yennefer-casting-was-to-challenge-beauty-standards-which-is-completely-insane/

Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. ... Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.

I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.

Emphasis is mine.