100 Kick-Ass Female Characters: #39
39. Olive Hoover, as seen in the film Little Miss Sunshine, portrayed by Abigail Breslin
It there anything better than being 7-years-old? It is one of the last times in your life that you get to be completely, obliviously, unapologetically awesome in your own mind, and absolutely everything is brand-new and exciting. At this point, everyone is still telling you you can be anything you want, to hell with the reality of a situation, and it doesn't even occur to you that it could be any other way. And that is precisely where Olive Hoover is.
Olive is a 7-year-old girl who wants to be Miss America. She practices her routine every day with her grandpa, and she exudes the sort of confidence only a 7-year-old could have. After being first-runner up in a pageant where the winner had to forfeit her crown, Olive gets to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, starting a roadtrip with her family in a broken down van which is easily one of the funniest roadtrips in history.
It isn't until she is on the way to Little Miss Sunshine that Olive starts to get a taste of reality. Her father makes a tasteless comment about how eating ice cream can make a girl fat, and you see Olive have her brush with body image issues; Olive is not a thin child, but, like a lot of little kids, has a Buddha belly. She has a touching (and tear inducing) conversation with her grandfather about whether or not she's actually pretty and how she doesn't want to disappoint her father by being a "loser." By the time they reach the pageant (short poor, dead grandpa), Olive's parents, uncle, and older brother have all recognized that Olive stands no chance in this pageant; the rest of the girls are Toddlers and Tiaras-esque polished and fake while Olive is Olive. By the time Olive comes to the stage with her talent routine and performs the single best strip tease ever performed to Super Freak, Olive has returned to the carefree, joyful little girl we met at the start of the movie, completely unaware of just how inappropriate her routine is.
And that is sweetly kick-ass.
It there anything better than being 7-years-old? It is one of the last times in your life that you get to be completely, obliviously, unapologetically awesome in your own mind, and absolutely everything is brand-new and exciting. At this point, everyone is still telling you you can be anything you want, to hell with the reality of a situation, and it doesn't even occur to you that it could be any other way. And that is precisely where Olive Hoover is.
Olive is a 7-year-old girl who wants to be Miss America. She practices her routine every day with her grandpa, and she exudes the sort of confidence only a 7-year-old could have. After being first-runner up in a pageant where the winner had to forfeit her crown, Olive gets to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, starting a roadtrip with her family in a broken down van which is easily one of the funniest roadtrips in history.
It isn't until she is on the way to Little Miss Sunshine that Olive starts to get a taste of reality. Her father makes a tasteless comment about how eating ice cream can make a girl fat, and you see Olive have her brush with body image issues; Olive is not a thin child, but, like a lot of little kids, has a Buddha belly. She has a touching (and tear inducing) conversation with her grandfather about whether or not she's actually pretty and how she doesn't want to disappoint her father by being a "loser." By the time they reach the pageant (short poor, dead grandpa), Olive's parents, uncle, and older brother have all recognized that Olive stands no chance in this pageant; the rest of the girls are Toddlers and Tiaras-esque polished and fake while Olive is Olive. By the time Olive comes to the stage with her talent routine and performs the single best strip tease ever performed to Super Freak, Olive has returned to the carefree, joyful little girl we met at the start of the movie, completely unaware of just how inappropriate her routine is.
And that is sweetly kick-ass.