I think we've had "pretty?" all wrong
You know how it's annoying that Eleven is written to randomly care about her attractiveness to Mike as a kid straight out of the lab? I just found a new way of looking at this where it makes so much more sense and doesn't suck.
All the prettys that ever get talked about:
El touches the picture of Nancy and says "pretty".
Mike tells El she looks "pretty. good. pretty good." and she looks in the mirror and repeats it, evidently reveling in the sensation of being deemed attractive by a boy.
Later, missing the wig that had enabled Mike to consider her attractive, she asks him "still pretty?" and he's like "yeah, really pretty!" and she seems relieved.
El piggybacks Billy's memories, sees his mom on the beach, and reports to the rest of the gang that she's a babe.
Pinned down by flayed Billy intent on feeding her to the meat monster, El's thoughts return to how pretty his mom was, and she tells him so, and this somehow saves the world.
But the one I overlooked, because it really doesn't fit with the others in that she isn't referring to a person, is when El runs away to her mother's house. 12 years too late, she enters the nursery room meant to be hers, reaches into her crib and pulls out a teddy bear and says, in a sad little whisper, "pretty."
This is the one that decodes all the others.
Eleven has a poor grasp of language and has been using this word in her own way. Visual attractiveness is a mere pinch of salt in her recipe for "pretty," where the key flavors are good. comfort. happy. safe. normal. soft. home. loved.
That soft happy teddy bear is something that should have belonged to El and comforted her as a little child beginning a normal life. Immediate previous dialogue for context:
Becky: [ Your mother] always believed that you'd come home one day.
El: Home?
Becky: Yeah, home.
El, picking up the teddy bear: Pretty.
The Nancy "pretty" being the first one establishes that it's El's word, not one she got from Mike.
Nancy's prettiness represents normalcy and happiness to El, the kind she worries will never be hers. There were also family portraits including Mrs. Wheeler (who El could've been drawn to as a friendly mother figure) and toddler Holly (who El could've been drawn to as a reminder of her past self) yet she made a beeline for Nancy. This makes me think El's interest in Nancy relates to her hopes for her own future.
Not long after that is the scene where she seeks out Nancy's bedroom and looks with tragic reverence upon the soft comfortable space and belongings of a normal girl, and what it might look like to be loved. I can't think anything is going through her mind except that this is the future that's been denied to her, and wondering if she can or will ever have something like it.
Billy's mom is conventionally pretty, but El is really describing her vibe as warm, involved, happy, loving. I can hear the delivery of "I think she's looking at me" as a bit wistful, as El would like to have a happy nurturing motherlady to look at her that way. (She does know her own mom at this point, but she's catatonic or whatever so they can never really have an interaction like this)
Billy doesn't not kill everybody because El complimented his mom.
El: She was pretty. She was really pretty. And you were happy.
(and then she touches his face and it's presumably the only genuinely compassionate touch he's felt in years and he deactivates)
It's right there in the dialogue that El gets through to him by painting a picture of his happiest memory. But I always thought "pretty" seemed like an annoyingly shallow thing to place so much emphasis on here, until I thought about pretty in this context. Pretty + happy are a single concept to both El and Billy.
Billy, to a lesser extent, also had normal childhood stolen from him. Due to his abuse and abandonment he shares El's longing for a mother, safety, warmth and love, and "pretty" spoke to him in a similar way. Watch his face, he's clearly changed before she even adds the happy part. "Pretty" is Billy's Running Up That Hill - it isn't a magic incantation that makes the monster drop dead, but it does give him a moment of clarity that he can use to fight.
So now let's look at those classics again. Although I've always found it endearing on a "lol, linguistically stunted child misunderstands slang" level, I suddenly see a lot more in it.
"You look pretty good." He's talking about her looks.
"Pretty. Good." She's talking about her worth.
Made-over-El stands in the mirror and thinks, here is a normal-looking girl, she is pretty and good, Mike said so. In the wig and dress, she understands herself to be someone else entirely. Mike, who has only recently named her "El, short for Eleven", reinforces this by re-naming her Eleanor while she's dressed like this, even though the name Elle would not have raised Mr. Clark's eyebrows for any reason.
Later when she's on the lam in the woods, she looks at her reflection in the water with and without the wig, and screams at herself because it hurts that the real her isn't "Pretty. Good."
So when she calls back to this, she still doesn't really care if Mike thinks she's attractive, because she only ever thought he meant her definition of "pretty" in the first place.
She's not asking am I good-looking with no hair? She's asking, me, too? the real me? do I belong with nice loved happy soft? and when he gives an enthusiastic yes, look at the little look she gives herself in the mirror. It's not f yeah, a boy finds me desirable. It's maybe there is hope for me.
And the next thing out of Mike's mouth is "I'm happy you're home."
Season 4 gave us one more sneaky one:
El: I am twice as happy now. You are right. It just takes time. I think I have finally adapted. At first I missed all the spring flowers, but now I find it pretty here too.
At this point, El has the life that that hopeful little girl in the mirror dreamed of: normalcy, a home, a mom, a family, a boyfriend, long hair, her own bedroom full of her own stuff and important little mementos like Nancy's. And the gnawing truth is, it still isn't making her happy. But this was the dream, so she's just trying to fake it til she makes it. Pretty here is not just about Hawkins vs Lenora scenery but the sense of home, wholeness and happiness that she's trying to fool both Mike and herself into believing she feels in her new life.
Here they are in order for your evaluation. thank you for your time
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
areudirty
