Basic Trope: An attractive woman is romantically involved with an unattractive man.
- Straight: Alice is a sexy woman, her husband Bob is generously considered plain-looking.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice makes the gods weep in jealousy, and yet she's with Bob, whose face has to be covered lest he give the same gods heart attacks.
- Alice is so beautiful she can make the hearts of men melt, while Bob's an Eldritch Abomination from the literal depths of Hell who makes people die instantly upon sight.
- Bob is a Kavorka Man who has been married to multiple gorgeous women while cheating on them with even hotter women.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is attractive, but not excessively so. Bob isn't that ugly, but he clearly won't be landing modeling gigs anytime soon.
- Alice is actually average-looking at best. However, her husband Bob is a Gonk.
- Alice may be a Ms. Fanservice (or the World's Most Beautiful Woman), but her husband Bob isn't actually all that ugly; Just humorously plain compared to her.
- Bob is actually physically attractive, but he has horrible fashion sense and even worse manners. Alice, on the other hand is fashionable and really genteel, still making one wonder how Bob managed to romance her.
- Alice is actually unattractive herself. But when compared to the even uglier Bob, she's a knockout.
- Bob's face may leave much to be desired but his body more than makes up for it and is what attracted Alice in the first place. Alice may be pretty in the face, but is overweight or has some kind of body deformity.
- Justified:
- Love is blind.
- Alice and Bob bonded over common interests, hobbies, life experiences and/or values.
- Bob has a great personality. Kindness and a good sense of humor can make up for a lot in the looks department.
- Alice has a terrible personality but Bob is willing to put up with it since it's his only way of being with a woman that hot and Alice stays with Bob because she knows he'll tolerate her bad behavior while better looking men won't.
- Bob is rich and Alice is a Gold Digger.
- Alice was a single mother and Bob was the only man willing to be with her. Or, tying into the Gold Digger point, she is only with Bob so that he can help raise her child(ren).
- Bob was handsome when he and Alice met, but he didn't age well or he let himself go over the years. Alternatively, he suffered a disease or injury that changed his looks for the worst. Alice still loves him in spite of him no longer being good-looking.
- Alice was chubby, plain and horribly dressed when she and Bob met, butbecame Progressively Prettier by getting cosmetic surgeries, losing weight, putting on makeup and wearing more fashionable clothing. Alice remains loyal to Bob because he loved her back when she was ugly.
- Bob got Alice pregnant during a drunken session and they married each other lest they face ostracization.
- Alice is blind and doesn't know or care what Bob looks like.
- Alice is physically or mentally disabled and Bob (who, though not attractive, is able-bodied and neurotypical) is one of the few men who's okay with that. On the more cynical side, Alice is merely using Bob as a caretaker.
- Alice was subject to Attractiveness Isolation and he was the first decent guy to ask her out.
- Alice finds Bob hot even though he is not conventionally attractive due to her personal tastes differing from the norm (such as her liking bald men or being a Chubby Chaser).
- Alice is asexual or demisexual and doesn't respond to looks at all (Bob may be ace as well, or is just so grateful to have a good-looking wife/girlfriend that he's okay with not having sex with her).
- Alice is a lesbian and Bob is The Beard (or Bob is gay and she is the beard, or both are gay and each other's beards).
- Alice and Bob were an Arranged Marriage.
- Alice married Bob in order to get her green card.
- Bob may look pretty homely, but holy crap, is he a demon in bed and yeah, pretty developed there, too.
- Alice has low self-esteem and doesn't believe she's good enough to deserve a better looking man. Bob may even be a Domestic Abuser who's all too happy to keep her confidence down.
- Alice is a transgender woman and Bob is one of the few men who doesn't mind.
- Inverted: Hot Guy, Ugly Wife.
- Subverted:
- Bob isn't ugly, but he does have some features considered unattractive like being overweight, hairy, etc.
- Bob looks hideous, but it turns out it was makeup for a movie and he's actually quite handsome.
- Alice is introduced wearing a veil and having a very nice body. Later, she takes off the veil, revealing her to be just as ugly as Bob is.
- Bob is seen bragging about his hot wife, Alice, and she's never seen and when it's time for The Reveal, she's even more unattractive than he is, huge teeth, small mouth, perpetual mouthful of spit, overbite, turkey neck, chapped lips, rail thin with no curves, unwashed greasy hair, and glasses that aren't even the sexy kind. It turns out Bob thinking she's hot is No Accounting for Taste.
- Bob remains The Ghost and Alice talks about how her husband feels insecure all the time, it's set up to be this, but Bob is genuinely attractive just with self-image issues.
- Alice is a professional model and talks about her husband Bob sometimes and the Wrong Genre Savvy viewers are led to believe it's this, until Alice reveals he's actually really, really hot and way out of her league.
- Neither Alice or Bob are actually married, they're just pretending to be married so their respective families will stop bothering them about the topic.
- Bob gets Magic Plastic Surgery to completely change his look. Now, he looks just as hot as Alice does.
- Bob decides to take his appearance more seriously and his appearance improves overtime as a result. Now, he's an equal match for Alice.
- Double Subverted:
- But he wears an incredibly realistic mask to hide that he's a burn victim.
- But she later gets plastic surgery to make her face beautiful.
- In the show's universe, that's considered the beauty ideal, so the men fawn over her the minute she appears.
- It turns out he only looks good in a suit, when wearing more casual clothing, Bob is indeed this trope.
- Bob turns out to be obese, nerdy, wears unflattering clothes, and is missing most of his teeth. That just happens to for some reason be Alice's type. Her friends roll her eyes and give a knowing look to each other. They both think each other are impossibly hot so it somehow works.
- But during their Fake Relationship, they fall in love and get married for real.
- Parodied:
- Bob is hideous, Alice is beautiful, but they live in a world of Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad so everyone wonders how Alice lucked out or why Bob settled.
- Bob thinks he's a stud, Alice frets over non-existant wrinkles.
- Zig Zagged: Bob looks hideous, but he's wearing make up for a movie, only for that to be a face mask to hide the fact he's a burn victim, only for Alice to reveal she's also wearing a mask to hide the fact she's a burn victim, but then a photo reveals that Alice was attractive and Bob was fugly before the accident that turned them both into burn victims, only for an earlier photo to reveal she had extensive plastic surgery.
- Averted: There is no extreme difference in looks.
- Alice and Bob aren't in relationship and are just friends.
- Enforced:
- The writer of the sitcom is the main character and he gave himself a lovely wife.
- The writer is a feminist who deliberately uses the dynamic to make a critique on the strict standards of beauty women have to follow.
- The producers insisted that Alice was played by a beautiful actress, even if it made her look out of Bob's league.
- Lampshaded: "Geez Bob, how'd a dog face like you get a pretty girl like Alice?"
- Invoked: "Don't worry Bob. It doesn't matter that you're ugly, she will still marry you."
- Exploited: Charlie tries to make Bob think Alice is a Gold Digger so he’ll break up with her and Charlie can have her all to himself.
- Defied:
- “Look, I don't care if I could buy a dozen hundred dollar an hour prostitutes a night, I've loved Alice my whole life. I don't care she turned out, as you call it, 'plain'.”
- Alice decides she’d rather have a hot husband.
- Discussed: "If this were a sitcom, Bob would be dating Alice despite the fact that he's ugly."
- Conversed: "It's so weird how, on TV, the ugly guy always gets the girls."
- Played for Laughs: Bob is introduced as the morbidly obese "barbershop bass with a butt for a face" and it turns out to be literally true. His wife is the reigning Miss Universe. Somehow they're a couple.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob develops a serious inferiority complex against Alice's awesome looks and constantly worries that she will eventually leave him for some stud.
- Alice fears that Bob views her as a Trophy Wife and will dump her the moment someone better looking comes along.
- The above insecurities bring about the end of Alice and Bob's relationship.
- Reconstructed:
- They realize that despite what other people think about them or what other people have done, Alice and Bob still love each other.
- Bob loses all of his money due to a series of bad luck. Turns out the bond between the couple is stronger than ever.
- When each discovers their insecurity, they're confused because of how attracted they are to each other.
- Played For Drama: Bob is a Henpecked Husband whose wife deliberately makes him uglier to avoid making other women attract to him, and even physically abuses him, cause Bob to have conspicuous scar on his face.
- Implied:
Back to Ugly Guy, Hot Wife.
