http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GaussianGirl

Jeff, Coupling , "The Girl With Two Breasts" "Do you remember when Captain Kirk saw a beautiful woman, the screen would go all misty? I thought his eyes were steaming up because he was so excited. Every time I talked to a girl in my class I tried to make my eyes steam up. They called me Scary Jeff."

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An especially common creature in The '60s, the Gaussian Girl is distinguishable by her supernatural blurriness and the soft, romantic music accompanying her.

When filmed, the Gaussian Girl is shot through a soft-focus filter, a piece of translucent plastic (or very sheer silk, in the days of classic film) or a quick smear of Vaseline, depending on the director's preference. This gives a soft, glowing aura to her, and smooths out any unappealing pores or lines on her face. The result makes her look nothing short of ethereal. If you can't tell a soft-focus shot, look at all of the light sources around her; if they have a starry-glare or halo look, it's soft focus.

Depending on the show, she might only display this quality when first encountered to show that she's the Girl of the Week, or she might be blurry all the time. She'll never be blurry when a man is in the shot with her, unless they're kissing. Closeups tend to have the most blur.

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Named for the Gaussian Blur effect in photo editing software. Also, she may arouse a viewer's desire to degauss his screen. That is, until he remembers it's LCD...

You can create your own Gaussian Girl by duplicating her base layer, giving the new top layer a strong Gaussian Blur, and then setting it to about 50% opacity. If you are a straight guy or a Lesbian and need glasses, you can achieve a similar effect by taking them off before looking at women. (Straight women and gay men also sometimes enjoy this effect when looking at men and there's definitely such a thing as a Gaussian Guy.) If you don't, try having a lot of alcohol first. This latter technique is called the Beer Goggles effect. (Thus the phrase, "She's a 2 at 10 but a 10 at 2".)

This technique has been somewhat less common since Moonlighting left the airwaves, having caused a critical shortage in the world supply of soft focus. Of the remains, some of it goes to embellishing non-human objects of desire as well these days; witness Food Porn (and generic American porn, where it is ubiquitous), as well as the Cargo Ship examples offered below. Some suggest that with the inception of High Definition film and television, which naturally shows more imperfections, that the Soft Focus trick might make a return to compensate.

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This may come from a practice in the early days of film making when a piece of silk or gauze, a sheer stocking, or Vaseline was placed over the lens of the camera to blur the image of the actresses and hide imperfections on the face. Popularized by the fabulous Carole Lombard, who spent her time in the hospital after suffering a serious facial injury devising ways in which she could hide her eventual scar. If she didn't invent the Gaussian blur, she knew the person who did.

There is some physiological justification for the "soft focus=appealing" relationship. Desire is one of the things that makes a person's pupils dilate. A side-effect of this dilation is to slightly shift the eye's focus into the distance, making anything closer just that little bit more blurry. With experience, the observer's capacity for visual perception learns to correlate cause and effect, and the effect becomes supporting evidence for the cause.

A more limited, so to speak, application of the technique was used during the days of The Hays Code to make sure that women in low-cut dresses weren't displaying their cleavage in too much detail, thus corrupting innocent youth. A limited portion of gauze or stocking, held in a frame, could be used to blur the "offending" anatomy and render it suitable for viewers.

Has nothing to do with Gauss guns. Or electromagnetism in general. (Well, not much to do with it.)

Compare Bishie Sparkle.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

In Gail Simone's run of Wonder Woman Vol 3, Tom Tressner remembers Wonder Woman proposing to him with a Gaussian effect. If there was one woman to use this on, Diana would be it.

Films — Animated

In Wall E, Eve not only gets this treatment at times, but actually lives it. Her semi-translucent white plastic body scatters light, giving her an innately soft outline.

Rio repeatedly applies this to Jewel (a female macaw; the protagonist's a male one). It's later used on Linda, but only when she wears a macaw costume.

Played for Laughs in Antz during Z and Bala's romantic moment at Insectopia; Bala's face is blurred as Z goes in for a kiss, before he is rudely interrupted by the other insects around the fire, requesting him to get more firewood. Z : Hey, ever wonder why they call you guys "pests"?

Happens when Hiccup first sees Astrid in the first How to Train Your Dragon movie, helped by the fact that there's a massive exploding fireball behind her.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Referenced in Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey. As part of the aftereffect of an alien plague that blinded her, one of the characters notes that the world is still blurry, and thinks that it makes her love interest look like a movie star.

And in Valley of the Dolls as Jennifer turns forty, after having been in a number of French art films, she plans to return to America to make movies there: she trusts her manager to make sure there's "silk on the camera" and soft lighting, and for situations like personal appearances, where she can't fully conceal her age from reporters' flash cameras, maybe she can imitate Greta Garbo and hide from the cameras.

Live-Action TV

Music

This effect—and other concealing camera tricks—are used throughout the music video of Divinyls' hit "I Touch Myself". Singer Christina Amphlett was trying to conceal her true age (she was about 32 at the time, probably more than a decade older than most Top 40 female pop singers).

The closeup shots of both girls in the ABBA video for "Take A Chance on Me" .

. The scenes of the woman in Gavin DeGraw's video for "Best I Ever Had" were shot this way, which along with the slow-motion and her dance-like movements gave her an incredibly ethereal feel.

Tabletop Games

There's Shout-Out "Soft Focus" spell... in "Nymphology. Blue Magic" (Mongoose Publishing, Encyclopaedia Arcane series).

Video Games

Web Animation

In Episode 5 of The Most Popular Girls in School, Lunch Lady Belinda saw Cameron van Buren like this.

In part 3 of Episode 60 of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, when Android 18 tells Krillin they should "talk later", a Gaussian blur is added to the original scene.

Western Animation