Mark Ruffalo: Literally a cover boy!
  • Mark Ruffalo: Literally a cover model.

Opening in cinemas today, Thanks for Sharing stars Mark Ruffalo as a recovering sex addict who navigates a romance with a character played by Gwyneth Paltrow. (It also stars Book of Mormon star Josh Gad and pop superstar Alecia "P!nk" Moore, and according to the Stranger review by Alison Hallett, it's pretty good.)

But I'm not here to discuss the qualities the film. What I'm fixed on is a statement made in the comments of the Stranger review:

I get fed up with movies that show the average looking guy with the hot girl. Paltrow in real life would never date an average or below average looking guy like Ruffalo. The hot girl / average guy and in some cases much older guy matchup is propaganda perpetuated by the primarily male establishment that runs Hollywood.. Most of the people that write and produce this crap want to portray the world in a way that favors them instead of how it really is. If you doubt that there is a bias ask yourself how often you see a movie with a stud leading man guy paired up with a plain girl.

The hot woman/shlub man combo is well documented (see the careers of Kevin James and Jim Belushi), but numerous other commenters jumped in to call bull on using Ruffalo/Paltrow as an example of this trend:

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To which our original complainer responded:

to ruffalo lovers - look at the guys that dated paltrow none of them look like ruffalo, lets be more specific paltrow is hot in the stereotypical way which means she would not date a guy that looks like ruffalo, you are welcome to think that ruffalo is hot , but someone that looks like paltrow would not date him, for one thing he is too short, which is fine for more open minded types but not for paltrow look alikes, thus my point - hollywood likes to stick not stereotypically hot guys with stereotypically hot girls but not the other way around

Of course someone jumped in to point out that Paltrow's husband Chris Martin ain't no great shakes, but now I put the question to you: