Explained: Why homestead girl looks the way she looks

So I have seen numerous posts debating the casting choice for homestead girl and how unfitting it is that she looks so "LA" and like she would shop at Erewon, seemingly not fitting the innocent, Christian country girl character.

This is just one out of 937 debates where I am like: Why the heck do people not get anything. Is it because you're all 12 (I hope you're not), or because you're so consumed by the thought of Sam being this weirdo guy, OR, do you really think that a multi-million-dollar production working with high end professionals only would know no better than you, some amateurs on a Reddit forum.

The casting and make-up choice were both deliberately (as anything else in the show, and let me tell you by reading all these posts, y'all have not even grasped the surface of the show's entire plot. It is drenched in symbolism, metaphors and the such and should not be consumed surface-level - oh wait, an analogy...).

However, onto homestead girlie.
The show opens with her and Rue's interaction and resumes with her and Rue again.
This alone should show us that this plot is one of the most monumental in the entire show (by entire show I mean all 3 seasons).

Let's empathize with her: Homestead girlie grew up in the middle of nowhere all her life (*). She was probably home-schooled, is bound to her family, the stead and their Christian beliefs. What's remarkable is how she secretly smirks at Rue when everybody else is praying and has their eyes closed. Not only her looks, also her behavior makes her stand out from the family. She is slightly portrayed as the outsider.

She tells us about how she dreams of the big wide world that's outside, one that she simply cannot seem to reach. Then suddenly Rue shows up at the stead, who is the personification of a wild, ruthless, passionate, limitless life; everything she desires. And she possibly even desires Rue, or at least thinks that Rue is the very coolest person she has ever met. She romanticizes it all and does not understand at all why Rue would want to swap lives with her.

Now in this scene, we have the music playing "you get too much, you get too high. Not enough, and you're gonna die". Now Rue here is clearly the person who gets "too much" of life; everything about her is absolutely limitless, out of control. Homestead girlie has nothing of all that and maybe feels like she is fading away on the inside, at least her eyes and words indicate all of this. For now, let's keep in mind: it's not about not doing certain things at all, but you should be considerate with them, and take a fine measurement.

Fast forward to the end of the show.
She remembered Rue immeeeediately. And she was utterly, utterly devastated to hear about her death. To me this is not a "normal reaction" to someone dying whom you've met only once months ago, but Rue was never just someone to her. Rue was the personification of her dreams. I am willing to bet on the fact that she was low-key planning on going with Rue next time she shows up, even though the show does not clearly indicate this.
In the final minutes, she is doing the same thing again; opening her eyes as the rest of the family has theirs closed, this time crying, not smiling. She can feel Rue's presence the same way Ali does, showing the bond she formed with her over this single interaction.

To me the character of homestead girlie and her portrayal by the actress is one of the brilliant and most touching in the entire series.
I hope that you now understand why she was casted the way she was. She is very much SUPPOSED to not resemble homestead girlie at alllllllll. She is supposed to look outstanding, to look like she does not fit in; because she doesn't.

Homestead girl is Maddie, she is Cassie, Kat, Nate, Jules and she is Rue.
She is a teenage girl on the verge of adulthood ("I just got my permit"), just like they were at the beginning of the show.

Just that this time, this girl was not born into the midst of a troubled, sick place, with troubled, sick parents and troubled, sick peers.
She is shielded away in heaven, in the most peaceful place; but it also kills her, in a way that the contrary did kill Rue. "You get too much, you get too high. Not enough, and you're gonna die".

I think that Sam meant to compare the different outcomes in life here when people grew up very differently. That even if they are the "same person", they could turn out very differently due to the ways they were raised or the surroundings that influenced them. Yet, still, what is in a person eventually cannot be surpressed and will find its way to the surface.

Finally, homestead girlie is us. She represents all those teenie girlies like I used to be one, who were sat at home in a boring small town, dreaming of an exciting life like Rue had it, even if it involved drugs and all that, well, still exciting. Stupid, naive. She comes to her realization as she realizes that Rue is dead. (It's another one of Sam's numerous warnings towards teenagers in this show, which is one of the two compounds she show consists of, this + symbolism)

Mark my words: if there is ever a season 4 (I know HBO said there won't be, but...) it will revolve around this girl and the story will be told the other way round.