And at the risk of overthinking it, I think that played a part in Cordelia not being that impressed at someone like Jesse drooling over her. A lot of shows will go with the cliche of the pretty and popular girl find herself flattered when she realises that the geeky boy she was dismissing actually has really genuine feelings for her and sees the person that she is underneath, whereas with Jesse all we were ever shown was that he was attracted to Cordelia when she was very mean to the people around her and had few layers, so all we are left to imagine is that it must have been purely about her looks... So yeah I object to the show framing Cordelia as ~the mean girl~ in that instance for not having any time for him when he asked her to dance
And we were also shown very little about why Xander fell for Cordelia, except that he found himself physically attracted when they were arguing. He was still just as dismissive and snarking at her after they began dating, i.e in Innocence when she points out that's not much they can do to help if Buffy and Angel are really in trouble, and Xander snarks back that if the vampires need grooming tips we'll give you a call. He did apologise for that remark later and to be fair he was worried at the time, but still it does beg the question that why was he with Cordelia if that's the way he still saw her deep down? He frequently belittled her interests and didn't seem to have much time for her personality, so yeah I wonder if part of the attraction was that Cordy was in love with him and became softer around him after a time (such as her smile and wrinkling her nose before they kiss in Innocence), which does tie in with part of the attraction possibly being a subconscious ego-drive desire to tame the girl who had always acted like Xander and his friends were beneath her in the past
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And at the risk of overthinking it, I think that played a part in Cordelia not being that impressed at someone like Jesse drooling over her. A lot of shows will go with the cliche of the pretty and popular girl find herself flattered when she realises that the geeky boy she was dismissing actually has really genuine feelings for her and sees the person that she is underneath, whereas with Jesse all we were ever shown was that he was attracted to Cordelia when she was very mean to the people around her and had few layers, so all we are left to imagine is that it must have been purely about her looks... So yeah I object to the show framing Cordelia as ~the mean girl~ in that instance for not having any time for him when he asked her to dance
And we were also shown very little about why Xander fell for Cordelia, except that he found himself physically attracted when they were arguing. He was still just as dismissive and snarking at her after they began dating, i.e in Innocence when she points out that's not much they can do to help if Buffy and Angel are really in trouble, and Xander snarks back that if the vampires need grooming tips we'll give you a call. He did apologise for that remark later and to be fair he was worried at the time, but still it does beg the question that why was he with Cordelia if that's the way he still saw her deep down? He frequently belittled her interests and didn't seem to have much time for her personality, so yeah I wonder if part of the attraction was that Cordy was in love with him and became softer around him after a time (such as her smile and wrinkling her nose before they kiss in Innocence), which does tie in with part of the attraction possibly being a subconscious ego-drive desire to tame the girl who had always acted like Xander and his friends were beneath her in the past