In The White Lotus, Alexandra Daddario’s Rachel is a portrait of quiet disillusionment wrapped in striking beauty. As a young, attractive journalist who has just married into wealth, Rachel seems to be living a fantasy—but her story reveals how beauty can become both a pedestal and a prison.
Daddario’s physical presence—flawless skin, wide blue eyes, effortless sensuality—makes her the ideal trophy wife in Shane’s world. But beneath that surface, Rachel is crumbling. Her beauty is admired, but also expected to be enough. When she voices doubts about her career or identity, she’s met with dismissal. She’s not supposed to want more—she already "won" by being beautiful and chosen.
Sex, too, becomes transactional. Intimacy with Shane feels performative, rooted more in expectation than mutual passion. Rachel isn’t explored as a complex sexual being, but rather as an object fulfilling a role. The show smartly critiques this dynamic—how female beauty is often reduced to a promise of availability, and how sex becomes a tool for maintaining appearances rather than expressing connection.
Rachel’s crisis isn’t loud, but it’s sharp: she realizes she’s valued more for how she looks than who she is. In a world where her beauty got her in the door, she now has to ask—does it trap her there, too?
