History Main / TarnishingTheirOwnBeauty

Depressingly, the latter is also TruthInTelevision; throughout history in any society where slavery was practiced, being a {{beautiful slave|girl}} has never been a desirable position since they were often lusted after by their masters, and rape was disturbingly common. Some women even resorted to scarring their own faces so they would turn away any possible abusers. Of course, the less extreme cases are way more common in normal society: not everyone who is naturally attractive wants to be the center of the attention so they want to downplay their beauty just to fit in better.

* Saki Satou in ''Manga/InterviewsWithMonsterGirls'' is a [[SuccubiAndIncubi succubus]] that wears tracksuits, glasses and uses an unflattering hairdo in an attempt to make herself more homely. ''Attempt'' is the keyword, since she is still considered very gorgeous by everyone she meets, much to her chagrin since she considers herself BlessedWithSuck.

* In Creator/TheBrothersGrimm's fairy tale "All-Kinds-of-Fur", a princess runs away from home when her father wants to marry her. She demands to have three beautiful dresses made, plus a cloak put together from a thousand kinds of pelts and fur. She thinks it will be impossible. The King delivers, so she puts on the cloak, blacks her hands and face with soot and runs away.
* In the French fairy tale "Donkeyskin", the king's late wife asks that he only remarry to someone who's beauty equaled her own, who turns out to be his own daughter. The princess flees from this fate, using an enchanted donkey skin cloak to appear dirty and ugly.

* In 1935 short film ''Film/BuriedLoot'', Joe, who embezzled $200,000 from his bank (and who is played by dashingly handsome Creator/RobertTaylor in one of his first film roles), sets off an explosion to deliberately mangle his own face, in hopes of hiding out from the law.

* ''Film/Hellboy2004'': Karl Ruprecht Kroenen's revised origin in the movie explains that he used to have a beautiful face as a child, but developed an extreme form of body dysmorphic disorder (referred in the movie as "surgical addiction"). As a result, he butchered own body by removing his own eyelids, lips, toe, and fingernails. During the movie, he always wears a gas mask to filter out germs, and his real face is shown when he's found supposedly dead and taken to Professor Bruttenholm for the autopsy.

* ''Film/TheMountie'': After being raped on the ship to Canada, Amethyst scarred her own face so men would not find her attractive any more.

* Tobias Brogan from the third book of the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series has a plain looking sister named Lunetta. The ending of the book reveals that, in order not to distract people from her more important (in her opinion) brother, she was using a magical artifact to conceal her much more attractive real looks from everyone including Tobias - except for, it is implied, when she needed to help the little brother [[VillainousIncest relieve some stress]].

* ''Series/{{Victorious}}'': In "Freak the Freak Out", Tori disguises herself as an ugly girl, as a scheme to be picked to compete against two girls in a singing contest. Since she looked like a nerdy loser, Hayley and Tara thought they had a sure chance of beating "Ugly Betty". When Tori starts singing on stage, she slowly rips off her disguise and reveals her true self.
* ''Series/Batwoman2019''. In "Grinning from Ear to Ear", while as a teenager the VillainOfTheWeek [[RageAgainstTheReflection smashed her dressing room mirror]] and used the shards to inflect a GlasgowGrin on herself. Towards the end of the episode she willingly lets supervillain Alice remove her face to use as a disguise, declaring the end result as "I'm finally perfect".

* In ''VideoGame/EnsembleStars'', Makoto does a very mild version of this as a general rule - as he is considered highly sought-after as a model due to his beautiful face, but modelling made him absolutely miserable, he [[TheGlassesGottaGo wears glasses]] whenever he can. In the main story, after he is kidnapped my Izumi in an attempt to make him part of Knights and keep him from going back to Trickstar, he threatens a much more permanent version, telling Izumi he'll beat up his face so he's not beautiful anymore unless he releases him. He even starts to do it, but when it hurts even more than he anticipated, he switches to foley work making it merely sound like he's beating his face up. It's not entirely clear whether Izumi was upset that his face was being ruined or because Makoto was hurting himself, but he does release him as a result.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': When Francine and Stan decide to renew their wedding vows, Stan makes it clear that the only reason he married her was that she was beautiful, and that he doesn't care about her personality and is not really interested knowing everything about her. When she leaves the house and stays with her parents, as per tradition, she comes back, unkempt and overweight, in order to teach Stan not to be so shallow. Stan counters by using [=CIA=] technology to make himself blind so he won't see her. Since his blindness will render him unable to work, [[StatusQuoIsGod Francine agrees to become better looking again because she doesn't work, being happy to be a good-looking housewife.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Inside Job|2021}}'': In the episode "Whoas-feratu," Reagan and Gigi find themselves needing to sneak into a red carpet event unnoticed, which Gigi protests as impossible for her due to [[ProudBeauty her lacking Reagan's "frumpy privilege"]], leading Reagan to give her a "makeunder" to cancel her attractiveness out. It works.

* From a meta perspective, this trope is really egregious in acting where attractive performers of either gender are cast to play ugly, older, or monstrous characters; see BeautyInversion.