Basic Trope: Attractive characters get away with questionable actions due to their good looks.
- Straight: Josephine, a beautiful blonde, uses her looks to manipulate others into doing her bidding and completely gets away with it.
- Exaggerated:
- Josephine gleefully engineers constant infighting among her many admirers for her own amusement. And in the end she gets away with it because she's the hottest character in the story.
- Josephine is guilty of serial murder, treason, racketering, cannibalism, and running a red light. But the judge lets her off because the law officially states, "all beautiful people brought before this court shall be pardoned, given a bag of gold and wished luck in their evil deeds."
- Josephine robs a bank. The police show up to arrest her, but take one look at her and immediately start fighting amongst themselves over who gets to help carry her dollar-sign bags to the getaway car. The sole female officer of the group is less than amused and speaks out in protest, only to be shushed by her male coworkers and threatened to be reported to Da Chief if she keeps "interfering with the investigation."
- Josephine nearly gets away with murder, only getting caught because the victim was also attractive.
- Downplayed: Josephine is a Pragmatic Hero or a Well-Intentioned Extremist or just believes in an eye for an eye. But people who would usually go What the Hell, Hero? or say things like If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him! to these kinds of people decide not to because she's hot and she's at least trying to do the right thing. Though if she was unattractive, they'd probably lecture her.
- Justified:
- Josephine lives in an extremely shallow and superficial culture which places physical beauty on a pedestal.
- Josephine is supernaturally beautiful, just looking at her leads to Mind Control.
- People (subconsciously or consciously) associate physical traits with unrelated traits that give that the illusion of beauty and people associate her traits with goodness. So she must be innocent, right?
- Jospehine is an ugly duckling turned gorgeous. She knows just how shallow people can be, and thus takes advantage of it.
- Inverted:
- Josephine's beauty attracts more attention to her, and thus more scrutiny to her unscrupulous actions.
- Plain Jane is assumed guiltless, because people think manipulation relies on looks. Cue Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
- Husky Russkie Ivan uses his intimidating appearance to intimidate people into cooperating with him without having to resort to overt threats.
- Josephine gets blamed for something she didn't do because she's ugly.
- Alternatively, people are jealous of her looks and punish her far worse than they would an average-looking person.
- Or People are jealous of her looks. So they compensate by assuming she's a bad person even though she's actually really is a decent person.
- Wasted Beauty
- Subverted:
- Josephine attempts to use her looks to manipulate others; unfortunately, the people she tries to manipulate don't actually find her attractive.
- Josephine gets away because the people are insanely forgiving, not for her looks.
- Double Subverted:
- The reason it didn't work on the last man whom Josephine used her looks on was because he was gay; as soon as she finds a straight man, she's got him wrapped around her little finger.
- The people forgive Josephine because she's beautiful but still poor.
- Parodied: Josephine is the very definition of Gonk, yet it still works thanks to an Uncanny Valley Make Up that makes her look even MORE repulsive for the audience, but irresistible to the in-universe characters.
- Zig-Zagged: Josephine's boyfriend Bob calls her on her manipulative behavior, but she lavishes him with a little extra affection until he's putty in her hands, willing to do anything for her. She then sets Bob and Dave against each other for laughs; this leads to Bob's death and Dave being seriously injured and Josephine's Heel Realization ... only she doesn't care. Not until Bob's sister Maybelle comes after her and scars her face, robbing her of the very thing she used to avoid punishment for her misdeeds ...
- Averted: Josephine's looks don't factor into how her various crimes/flaws are dealt with.
- Enforced: Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty (when this trope only applies to female characters).
- Lampshaded: "All it takes is a little smile, and I can get away with murder. Why? Because I'm the most beautiful woman in this whole country."
- Invoked: Josephine takes special care of her appearance in order to be as attractive as possible and use this to her advantage.
- Exploited: The Big Bad knows that The Hero is a sucker for a beautiful woman and purposefully send his most attractive minion to cause trouble.
- Defied:
- "I don't care how you look like, you're still suspected of murder and I'm going to interrogate you like I did with the other suspects!"
- "Yeah, right. Like I've got a shot with you. Do it yourself, you lazy bint."
- "Look, lady, if I don't bring you in, my Explosive Leash goes off. Decapitation-by-bomb trumps goo-goo eyes."
- Josephine's mom tries to teach her it's bad to manipulate people at young so that this trope won't happen.
- Alice the vigilante tosses a vial of acid at Josephine's face before dragging her to the cops. Jo becomes such a Butter Face that people decide to toss her in jail just to stop seeing that.
- Discussed: "She's cute. There are different standards for cute people." "You mean no standards."
- Conversed: "Aaarrggghh! I hate how these shows assume being attractive makes you a shite. It doesn't!"
- Deconstructed:
- Beauty is fleeting, so Josephine's sway over others naturally wanes with time. Eventually, she's forced to face the consequences of her actions without her pretty face to protect her.
- Josephine's seductive abilities will be of no use to her this time because the ones out to get her are women and they're not lesbians.
- Josephine's seductions backfire when the men get way too eager, even downright predatory.
- Reconstructed:
- Aware of this natural time limit, Josephine nevertheless decides to flaunt it while she's got it.
- As her beauty slowly fades, she realizes she won't be able to get away with being a Jerkass any more and becomes a better person as a result. By the time she's completely lost her looks, she's a Cool Old Lady.
- Beauty is more than sex appeal — Josephine manages to escape a beating because it would be the equivalent of smashing the Mona Lisa.
- Played for Laughs: Josephine uses it as an actual legal defense for Hero Insurance despite use of nuclear weapons. The courts just accept it and release her immediately.
- Played for Drama:
- Josephine gets away with so much shit it takes Summary Execution Man to stop her.
- The story is from the perspective of one of Josephine's victims or a relative/friend of one of Josephine's victims.
- Implied: Josephine is allowed to leave the police station almost immediately after being brought in for questioning.
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