Glee Retrospective: Beauty Standards, Fatphobia, and the Absurdity of the Faberry Duet
A look back on the ‘Born This Way’ episode of Glee perfectly encapsulates Glee’s energy, from the dark comedy, emotional character development, and commentary on our society at large with the Faberry duet, “I Feel Pretty/Unpretty”.
It has been 10 years since the release of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” album, and in celebration I wanted to do a look back on one of Glee’s most memorable episodes entitled, “Born This Way”. In retrospect, Glee as a whole has come under fire for being problematic. And it is. Very much so. It is a series that is a product of its era, as things even a decade ago in the landscape of television were very different than they are now. Answers will vary among fans as to when Glee began to lost it’s charm. Some will say it began in season 2 with the myriad of guest stars, and many will say it took a nose dive in season 3 when narratives and character development began to more clearly lack focus. But the series still holds a lot of nostalgia for the Gleeks who were there for every live airing, who waited out every hiatus, and who still hold a top spot every year on their Spotify wrapped for the “Glee Cast” because they still listen to their favorite covers.
The episode focuses on Mr. Schuester trying to teach the Glee club about learning to love their biggest faults. This idea is inspired by Rachel, who is accidentally pushed to the ground by Finn during dance rehearsal and breaks her nose, and after a quick visit to the Doctor, considers plastic surgery to reduce the size after the Doctor suggests it. Her consideration for surgery is met with mixed responses after she brings it up in front of the Glee club, with some members, notably Santana and Mercedes, understanding why Rachel would want to change this about herself to lessen the alienation she feels. Santana is blunt, agreeing with Rachel and even going so far as to point out flaws in most members in the room, telling them that they’re lying if they say they wouldn’t change things about themselves if they could.
Mr. Schuester is appalled. He says in response to everyone’s comments (when tbh it’s mostly Santana going in so his outburst gave me a chuckle) that “The thing you would most like to change about yourself, is the most interesting part of you.” This prompts Mercedes to respond, “Well, maybe. But at this school the thing that makes you different is the thing people use to crush your spirit.”
We cut to the next scene where Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury, the school guidance counselor, are having lunch and discussing how to help the students for the week. Mr. Schu comes up with the “Born This Way” lesson, to help the students accept the things they would change about themselves or are most ashamed of, because they were born just the way they are and should accept themselves. It’s been pointed out that this lesson was flawed in delivery, and I have to agree.
Teenagers with an already fragile sense of identity shouldn’t be taught that any part of themselves is something to be seen as ‘shameful’ in anyway. With Rachel in particular this episode, the suggestion of surgery by her doctor is prompted by the fact that she’s Jewish and should be seen as a ‘vanity’ adjustment. By the end of this episode, Kurt, who spends the bulk of season 2 having the courage to live his life openly in an extremely homophobic environment and falling in love with Blaine, puts on a “Likes Boys’ shirt, insinuating that being Gay is something he would change or is ashamed of and it’s not explored or talked about at all. While Santana’s famous ‘Lebanese’ shirt is a little more thoroughly explored, as her coming out as a lesbian and feelings of shame are a large part of her story arc, this episode ends with her sitting out the big performance in the auditorium. Mercedes wears a shirt that says ‘No Weave’, implying an insecurity about wearing weaves or showing her natural hair as the only Black girl in Glee club. But this is Glee, and this is Mr. Schuester, who wears a ‘Butt Chin’ shirt at the end of week’s lesson to show the students what he is most ashamed of or would most want to change.
Rachel and Quinn are in the Doctor’s office. Before the Doctor comes in for Rachel’s consultation, she asks Quinn what it’s like to look like her, shorthand for what it’s like to be pretty. Quinn answers honestly:
“I pretty much have a warped sense of the world.”
She continues and says her looks makes her believe that people are always nice and willing to accommodate her needs. Rachel doesn’t have anything to say to this, and having spent over a season and a half with both of these characters, we know that naturally expecting people to be nice and accommodating upon first meeting them is something Rachel can not fathom, having taken the brunt of bullying from multiple students at school, including from Quinn herself. Soon after this exchange, the Doctor comes in, and they launch into their duet of one of Glee’s most iconic and memorable mash-ups “I Feel Pretty/Unpretty”, a combination of “I Feel Pretty” from the Broadway musical West Side Story, and TLC’s hit song “Unpretty”.
The duet itself is one of the best, if not the best Glee has to offer. However, in true Glee fashion, the context of having multiple people gang up on Rachel and tell her unsympathetically that she’s making a terrible decision by getting surgery, and then have the narrative choice of having her and Quinn, her former bully, the white blonde cheerleader, sing a duet which is one part a popular song written by TLC, a Black group, about being undesirable, was absurd. Glee had a track record with giving culturally significant songs to everyone but Mercedes, Tina, and Santana. Hearing the line “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow” coming from long, voluminous haired Quinn Fabray was silly then and it’s silly now. BUT, the absurdity is what makes the duet work, because it’s what makes Glee as a show work. When Glee goes all in, they just go all in. This duet, which is the only duet Rachel and Quinn ever sing together, perfectly encapsulates the show’s comedy, offensiveness, and sentimentality.
We watch the two sing together, in harmony in the Glee club, and also in separate cuts as they get pictures taken for Rachel’s potential surgery. The duet comes in the first half of the episode, and we are currently unsure of Quinn’s motives to help Rachel. After all, the two have a very sordid history. Finn, Quinn’s boyfriend, was one of the few to speak out earlier in the episode and say he liked how he looked, even when Santana was pointing out his ‘puffy nipples that look like custard’ and he begs Rachel not to get the surgery and tells her she is beautiful as she is after she reveals the altered consultation photos to the club. We get a shot of Quinn after he says this to her, and she looks pained.
We get a look into Quinn’s backstory and see her motivation behind her half of the “I Feel Pretty/Unpretty” duet. At McKinley High, prom is coming up, and Quinn is vying for prom queen. Another member of Glee Club, Zizes, also wants the title as well. Zizes, one of the best characters Glee has ever had, is seen as an immediate threat to Quinn. Girls in school who look like her are happy and excited to see someone like them running for prom queen. But Quinn goes for the throat and tells Zizes that people would only nominate her as a joke, and that she may even win, and should pull out of the running to save herself the embarrassment. She sulks off after vowing to make things personal.
But the next time they meet up, it is Zizes who has pulled up personal history on Quinn in order to smear her name to damage her chances for prom queen. She has figured out her real full name and the middle school she used to attend, showing Quinn a picture of her younger self with the name Lucy Q. Fabray. Quinn quickly explains to Zizes that when she was in middle school, she hated the way she looked, and as she got older she lost weight with athletics and even asked her Father for a nose job (to which he said yes). When she’s finished with her almost tearful explanation of her past life, Zizes surmises:
“So you hate yourself.”
Quinn responds:
“No, I love myself. That’s why I did all those things…I was a miserable little girl, and now I’m going to be Prom Queen.
If we wrap right back around to the beginning of the episode where Rachel discloses wanting plastic surgery, we can now see why Quinn is so willing to help Rachel. Rachel validates everything Quinn worked so hard to get away from, and having that kind of praise, even coming from Rachel, makes it worth it. But there’s a feeling of devastation for Quinn because Rachel receives validation from Finn that she never got from anyone in her life. Finn tells Rachel ‘You are beautiful as you are’ even after being showed the altered photos with Quinn’s nose, and that’s painful. Quinn likely never heard that during a fragile time in her development when she needed it most, and unfortunately the long-lasting emotional damage has already been done for Quinn in this regard.
When Rachel asks Quinn in the Doctor’s office what it was like to be her, to look the way she does, Quinn answers that she has a warped sense of the world. Now that the viewer has more context that she used to be ‘Lucy Q. Fabray’ and went to such lengths to change every aspect of her identity, from her appearance to her name, it gives another layer of meaning to this line of dialogue and her relationship to Rachel.
All children reach a point in their childhood where they realize they need to fit a beauty standard, or standards, in order to belong, and what makes Quinn Fabray such an interesting character to me is that throughout Glee’s run, she gets to shine in episodes like this one, where we get deeper insights into her deeper understanding of how the world works on a structural level. With the reveal that she so drastically changed her body in middle school, to the point of having plastic surgery on her face with the permission of her Father, because she was lonely and knew that doing so would raise her status and make people notice her in a positive way speaks to our fatphobic society and deeming people worthy or valuable of love or attention over the way they look, even if those people are literal children. Quinn’s worldview is warped, because the moment she ‘dropped the weight’, got a nose job and started going by her middle name, she was suddenly loved and deemed worthy of attention.
People will try to mask praise of transformations like this as loving the newfound ‘confidence’ of the person but the truth is, when it comes to beauty standards, thinness is valued no matter what it costs. Quinn was miserable as Lucy, and she’s still miserable and insecure as Quinn, evident by how she is quick to project her insecurities onto Zizes, and Rachel.
Quinn is at her locker now, convinced that her run as Prom Queen is over and done. Finn is there with a picture of ‘Lucy’ in his hands. Quinn thinks it looks terrible, but he likes it because, as he puts it, “This is the first time I can really see her.” Quinn, possibly hearing this for the first time in her life, thanks him. Avid watchers of Glee and lovers of Faberry know that Finn has always acted as a proxy between Rachel and Quinn, who voices unsaid emotions between the two girls. In this instance he gives Quinn the validation and catharsis she so desperately needed after an emotionally charged week in Glee Club. Rachel has always been a confrontational point in their relationship, and this is one of the last episodes before Quinn and Finn break up for good and Rachel and Finn begin their relationship. Rachel receives validation from Finn that she is beautiful just the way she is, and here at the end of the episode, Quinn receives the same validation she’s been yearning, but only after we take an emotional journey with her through past insecurities and her current projections.
Quinn is one of the few Glee members who is afforded somewhat consistent character development throughout the series. The “I Feel Pretty/Unpretty” mashup duet in this episode is the only duet Quinn and Rachel sing together in the entirety of Glee. The poignancy of both Rachel and Quinn’s separate motivations behind why they’re singing will hit home for viewers, whether you’re feeling like Rachel, who’s felt like they’ve never been one of the ‘beautiful ones’, or you see yourself as Quinn, who may be perceived as having it all together but may be extremely insecure on the inside. Or both.
We end with Quinn and Zizes making up. Quinn receives an apology for having her past dug up and plastered around the school-which we find out from Zizes ended up being a help to Quinn’s campaign and made her more authentic to the student body. Quinn apologizes as well, telling Zizes that she respects how she walks around the school like she owns it, and that she had to ‘go on a crazy diet’ and get a nose job to have the same energy. The next time we meet up with Rachel, she tells the Glee club she has decided not to go through with the surgery, as she had a talk with the newly returned Kurt Hummel who reminded her that Barbara Streisand would NEVER conform to traditional beauty standards. Rachel sits out the performance of “Born This Way” while her nose continues to heal, and the Glee Club ends the weeks lesson.
*More Gay Thoughts:
I’m always surprised when I return to this episode of Glee. I think it fumbled with the Gay plotlines that were groundbreaking as they were airing at the time, but haven’t aged as well upon rewatch. The opening scenes are a promise to pay homage to Lady Gaga’s 2011 hit “Born This Way” which was an ode to the LGBTQ community about unconditional acceptance and loving yourself completely, but this episode has a surprising amount of Gay shame, which is why I didn’t talk too much about Santana, Karofsky, and Kurt here. The next episode, Rumors, has more to do with Santana’s character while this episode feels more like set up. But I do very much enjoy the Bully Whips. Kurt returning to McKinley High and being serenaded by Blaine’s Good-Bye is still quite the showstopper.
