I agree with you that there are benefits and drawbacks to beauty in Hollywood,
OK
but this is a different argument than the original poster made, and that you yourself made.
Is it?
The original poster called her adorable and you said she had "ethereal beauty,"
Right, that is a good word for it, I think--"Extremely light or delicate.
Of the celestial spheres; heavenly." Her beauty is "ethereal" in the sense that it seems to touch on an ideal form of beauty (that golden mean of beauty not informed by Plato, but by natural selection). She is a Goddess in the sense of being that to which so many aspire (hence the Nora Ephron quotation about "your basic nightmare"). But therein lies the danger--what is more common than the idea of a perfect blonde? And Hollywood has no lack of conventionally perfect blonde goddesses waiting to get their crack at the big screen.
Her beauty is also "delicate" in the sense that it is so fine as to be transitory/ephemeral (e.g., "Take a picture, it will last longer"), which fits the other sense of the definition of "ethereal."
which seemed to indicate that she lacked other kinds of qualities beyond her looks.
The "seemed" does not follow here. That I only commented there about her quality of beauty does not say anything about qualities that she may possess or lack.
Elsewhere, I have argued that the problem with her conventional beauty (lacking the stamp of individuality) is so great that it may outshine and obscure her other qualities, whatever those qualities may be (or not be). That is, I am not arguing that "she's just a pretty face," but rather that when people see her, she is competing with her own good looks (poor thing) so as to display her other qualities. Thus, I noted how Brad Pitt leaned into ugly for a decade to kick the "pretty boy" image associated with him.
I countered that I thought she had both natural beauty as well as genuine talent and versatility, which I thought were factors that might allow her to have longevity.
And I have granted
in this thread that she might have that longevity and that she may have already displayed her true chops in her existing body of work. I am not as familiar with her oeuvre as are others.
I have not, for example, seen
I Tanya or Mary
Queen of Scotts. Rather, I have seen Harley Quinn's posterior in short-shorts and Margot naked in a bubble batch explaining how financial markets work in
The Big Short, and the object of Jordan Belfort's attraction in
The Wolf of Wall Street. And now I see that she has literally appeared as "Barbie" in a comedy.
Now, you are saying it's not just that she's beautiful, but that she doesn't have the right kind of beauty, and that her beauty is not "distinctive".
On the contrary, I am clarifying.
I am saying that the ideal of the average, that beauty which lacks the memorable flaw, is paradoxically forgettable. When the bloom leaves the rose, so too does the essential flavor which seemed to inhabit it. When Jennifer Grey lost her nose, she gained in conventional beauty, but also became just another face in the crowd.
And what happened to her career after the nose job? It is better to age with a distinctive look if you are in the business that needs recognition and familiarity.
Does this mean that you are conceding that Margot Robbie may actually have other qualities beyond her beauty,
I don't believe that I ever expressly denied this. Moreover, I have already conceded that I may have missed her taking the very sort of roles I have said I think she should take and that she may have already, thereby, demonstrated her other talents, by leaning against type (i.e., a pretty face). There is nothing for me to concede here, because I have never said it or already conceded it.
like natural talent, for example and/or versatility, and are therefore seeking to use other grounds to substantiate your argument?
What do you think "my argument" is? What do you think I am trying to prove?