History Main / JustTheWayYouAre

* Plastic surgeon Bill Pullman convinces Bridget Fonda she doesn't need a boob job in ''Singles.'' Just to give your WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief a good workout. (To be clear, the snark here was directed at plastic surgeons, not Fonda.)

A subtrope of BeYourself. Should they go through with it anyway, the convincer will likely think of it as an UnnecessaryMakeover; whether the audience does as well is [[SubjectiveTrope subjective]].

* Rather cynically played with (perhaps an outright deconstruction) in a second-season episode of ''VeronicaMars'', where in an attempt to investigate a plastic surgeon's possible gang connections, Veronica (played by ''[[http://amansworldonline.com/wp-content/gallery/kristen-bell-1/kristen-bell-1.jpg Kristen Bell]]'', people) starts listing "flaws" that she wants fixed for her eighteenth birthday. (She doesn't have a large chest--which she of course starts with as "the obvious"--but it wouldn't work with her body type anyway.) The surgeon hands her a pamphlet that deals with body issues, saying he'd refuse to operate on her, and leaves his obvious. She ''immediately'' gets suspicious of him...and turns out to be right.

-->''And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while''

* In ''{{Community}}'' episodes [[Recap/CommunityS1E17PhysicalEducation Physical Education]] Abed's comfortable with himself as he is, and he's okay if others want to try to change that to discover this trope.

-->''Coz your amazing just the way you are''

-->''Coz girl you're amazing just the way you are''

* Kat from ''GunnerkriggCourt'' once attempted to put on makeup to impress Aly, only to [[CosmeticCatastrophe botch it]] [[FemininityFailure horribly]]. When Annie offers to make her look better, she simply takes off her makeup and tells her that Aly likes her for who she was before she started putting it on.

* The entire "Born This Way" episode of Glee. Rachel breaks her nose, and decides to get a nose job. (Somehow, without parental consent?) The entire club takes sides, with nearly everyone on the "don't change how you look" side, and Quinn, interestingly, on Rachel's. Rachel, after 40 minutes of angsty singing, decides against a nose job, to the delight of her peers. Quinn, it is revealed, used to be overweight and had glasses, but now changed. However, this somehow works out for her, as people admire her for both being beatiful now and for being "herself" then. It's unclear what the message is for Quinn, as she still remains beautiful. One could argue that the message was for her to accept her old self, but that must be much easier [[GrassIsGreener looking the way she does now]].

* On ''Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys'' (2001) the terrible computer animated sequel to ''RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer,'' Rudolph has the opportunity of getting a normal nose, but he learns...eh, you know by now.

* Kat from ''GunnerkriggCourt'' once attempted to put on makeup to impress Aly, only to [[CosmeticCatastrophe botch it horribly]]. When Annie offers to make her look better, she simply takes off her makeup and tells her that Aly likes her for who she was before she started putting it on.

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* One ''{{Animaniacs}}'' short featuring Slappy Squirrel has her going to have plastic surgery, but after her old nemesis, Walter Wolf, tries to ruin things she sends him in for some instead and walks out saying she earned her wrinkles. Walter Wolf, however, is traumatized at the results of his surgery, claiming that no villain will take him seriously again.

[[AC: Music]]
* Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are", the trope namer.
** As well as the Bruno Mars song with the same name.
* The song "Do Your Own Thing" from Raven of That's So Raven and Cheetah Girls fame.
* WilliamShatner's "''I Want You to Be You''" subverts this trope, describing a man talking about how he loves a woman just the way she is, right up until the point he doesn't.

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[[AC:RealLife]]
* TruthInTelevision: If only MichaelJackson had learned this lesson...
* This trope thinks Lindsay Lohan would have been much better off if someone had been able to get this through to her. She was far prettier has a curvy, pale, natural redhead.
** Difficult to say what's been harder on her: the plastic surgery or the self-destructive lifestyle.

* Brian on ''{{Wings}}'' becomes obsessed with a bump on his nose after a plastic surgeon points it out. He eventually plans to have his face overhauled until his brother Joe points out how much his various feature resemble those of several deceased relatives.

* This is, of course, exactly the opposite of how it works on ''[[NipTuck Nip/Tuck]]''

* "Just the Way You Are" by {{Bruno Mars}} of course
* Billy Joel's "Just the Way that You Are", the trope namer.

** ThisTroper remembers a TV show that once showed a Photoshop aged pic of Jacko, showing how would he have aged if he didn't have these surgeries (or stopped having them by the "Thriller" time, where he still looked normal). And he was [[GrandmaWhatMassiveHotnessYouHave quite good looking]]! What a pity...
*** This troper remembers that too. It should be noted that they were wrong; he would still have ended up white, if not quite as massively pallid as he was by the end, due to genuinely having a disorder that caused his skin to lighten. A not-inconsiderable amount of the skin-bleaching was probably to cover up the places where he was only light in patches.