Basic Trope: A character's troubles stem from his/her good looks.
- Straight: Alice is flawlessly gorgeous, which unfortunately means she's the victim of jealousy from other women and sexual harassment from men, and she worries that when she receives positive attention, it's only because of her looks.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice has never been able to make friends with anyone because they're all reduced to debilitating nosebleeds and drooling at the sight of her.
- People (who normally wouldn't rape others) consistently try to have their way with Alice because they just have to have her right then and there, whether she's okay with it or not.
- Alice is so beautiful that even beasts and machines go ga-ga over her.
- Downplayed: Alice is very pretty and feels annoyed by the way men sometimes stare at her, which she thinks wouldn't happen if she were more average-looking.
- Justified:
- Alice was Blessed with Suck by a Wicked Witch who enchanted her to be the most beautiful person in all of human history just to attract unwanted attention to her.
- Alice lives in a culture where the assumption is that she wants all the attention she gets for her beauty, and assumes it's all positive even when that would require some rather creative thinking—making it extremely difficult for her to get anybody to take rather reasonable complaints seriously.
- Alice has a Stalker with a Crush, and she'd rather not be attractive enough to catch his notice, thank you very much.
- Alice is painfully shy and would rather not attract any attention whatsoever.
- Alice suffers from Attractiveness Isolation.
- A common cultural assumption in the setting is that beauty is inversely proportional to intelligence, so nobody takes Alice seriously when she tries to do anything intellectual.
- Inverted:
- Alice is hideous, which makes her an outcast.
- Alice gets a lot of positive attention for being beautiful and enjoys it.
- Alice's life is made massively better by being made hideous. She is able to infiltrate many areas with ease because everyone tries to ignore her. Plus they don't remember her face beyond "butt-fuck ugly". She becomes a commended heroic agent for her non-violence. When her foes catch on to her and bar all hideous women she gets to retire in comfort from the grateful leaders. Her fiance blind Bob is a Pretty Boy and the nicest person she has ever met.
- Subverted: While Alice frequently complains about the jealousy and unwanted attention she gets because of her looks, she secretly enjoys the attention, and is only complaining to get more.
- Double Subverted: Until one of the jealous girls actually attack and maim her. Then Alice realize that having such a Head-Turning Beauty is not so good after all.
- Parodied: Alice is considered beautiful in-universe, but whether because of the art style, Alice being a member of a very non-humanoid species, or something else altogether, the audience has no reason to consider her even moderately attractive.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is a part of a Mage Species who thinks being ugly is desirable and is despaired when a rival witch curses her to become beautiful. Only due to the different beauty standards, Alice's new looks isn't actually that attractive to those outside her clan.
- Averted:
- Alice's looks only benefit her life.
- Alice's looks are not commented on or they simply don't really affect her life that much.
- Enforced: The story is based on a real-life model, Alice who hated her beauty.
- Lampshaded: "Wow, you wouldn't think being pretty could cause so many problems!"
- Invoked: Bob seeks to use Alice's vanity to have her Hoist by Her Own Petard.
- Exploited:
- Alice uses her flawless looks to become a Femme Fatale Spy.
- Bob constantly calls attention to Alice whenever he sees her, causing her to be swamped by unwanted admirers and thus arriving late to any activities, from weddings to sales.
- Defied: Alice tries to downplay her good looks with an unfashionable haircut, unflattering glasses, and frumpy clothes, and going all Hollywood Homely to avoid unwanted attention.
- Discussed:Bob:You having problems? Please. There aren't many downsides to looking the way you do.
Alice: Then live a couple of weeks in my shoes by all means. You'll learn what it's like when everyone's got their eyes on you. - Conversed: "And here comes the message that being pretty isn't all that cracked up to be."
- Deconstructed:
- Over the course of the story, it's made abundantly clear that Alice's misery is not caused by her beauty; rather, it's caused by the blatant disrespect of the men (who feel entitled to her because they find her attractive) and the cruelty of the women (who act out of envy) surrounding her. Hiding her appearance in order to escape her poor treatment only makes Alice even more miserable, since it's the only way that people will be civil to her.
- Alice's curse means people see her as their ideal standard of beauty, not as she truly is. As a result, she can't have a healthy relationship with anyone and becomes very lonely and depressed.
- Reconstructed: For a given value of "reconstructed": the one person who is humble and immune to Alice's curse and sees her for what she is Warts and All is still completely gone ga-ga over her (mostly inner) beauty. Alice just has to accept that there is no winning about this and takes them as a partner.
- Played For Laughs:
- One of the show's running gags is people causing Disaster Dominoes because they were Distracted by the Sexy... and Alice getting caught in the collateral damage. She is even Acquainted with Emergency Services, that many times she has been hurt... sometimes by the emergency services being ga-ga over her beauty.
- Alice's completely desensitized to the affections of people who are attracted to her and the truly bizarre actions they perform to try to get her attention.
- One of the show's running gags is that Alice is completely unable to succeed at anything she sets herself to do (from entering marathons to becoming the store's Umpteenth Customer) because of all of the Loony Fan-types bursting out of the woodwork to flirt with her and causing hilarious mayhem as collateral damage.
- Played For Drama:
- Some of the unwanted attention Alice deals with includes people willing to kidnap her, or do worse.
- People keep dismissing Alice, who is a genius, for a dumb supermodel-type and at the absolute best-case scenario as a pretty face who the real genius is using to "sell" them the idea.note
- Alice is a Femme Fatale who commits a murder and makes Just One Little Mistake - that being that she's so pretty that witnesses pay attention to her and perfectly remember her face.
- Alice's beauty is a literal curse in the vein of Stephen King stories like Thinner - by which we mean she is constantly becoming more and more beautiful in the eyes of all that surround her and they become more and more creepy with their actions to the eventual point that Alice's only choices are to commit suicide (or at the very least maim herself horribly) or be attacked by the zombie-like horde of sexual deviants out to get her.
- Alice's beauty causes her to suffer an In-Universe application of the Uncanny Valley.
Back to So Beautiful, It's a Curse... And stop staring!
