Beauty Equals Goodness - Television Tropes & Idioms

Lois: Call me crazy, but I've always been a firm believer that beauty... it's on the inside. (gets knocked out)
Dr. Elain Fine: The people that say that are the ones who already have it on the outside.

—Smallville

Blossom: This is bad. He's clearly an evil monster. A monkey that talks, plus he has a dark aura! And he stinks. So since I'm wearing pink, I'm a righteous transforming heroine that defeats villains! This is Japanese common sense.

—Demashita Powerpuff Girls Z

Every hero worth his salt must be physically attractive, or at the very least, better-looking than half of other people his or her age.

Let's face it: despite that ongoing Aesop of not judging a book by its cover, readers and watchers relate better to good-looking heroes than ugly or even only plain-looking ones. Even so-called geeks and undesirable people will be far more attractive than the norm or undergo a makeover to reveal that — ta-dah! — they were Beautiful All Along, so that's okay.

This practice goes as far back as the ancient Greek expression "Kalos Kagathos", abbreviation of "Kalos kai Agathos", which means "Beautiful and Good." In several other languages (including most of the appropriately named Romance languages), the word for "good" actually also means "good looks."

This standard is more relaxed for side characters who can be truly ordinary-looking or even literal aliens, but expect the lead character to be pleasing to look at, even if he is the alien.

The heroes who are truly unattractive do not fare as well as their prettier counterparts. Often, they're saddled with emotional and psychological problems that would make the most embittered Anti Hero blanch. If they're lucky, they become The Grotesque and die with dignity. Even if they survive, they often do not get all they want or must sacrifice something: the prime example would be Disney's version of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame where the deformed hero gives up his love interest to a better-looking man (the book had an even crueler ending). It seems that to have a truly happy ending, his appearance must be converted to a more attractive one, a la Beauty and the Beast.

A biological "justification" for this shallow standard is that humans are naturally drawn to the most physically fit of their kind, whose indicated health and vigor would make them ideal mates. Or the readers and viewers unconsciously put themselves in the shoes of the hero and would like to fancy for a while that they're a badass, devilishly handsome man who gets all the beautiful girls. Of course, Fan Service might have something to do with it too.

Sometimes, presumably to disguise this standard, the villain will be made attractive too. But even if he's given all the Kick The Dog moments, his pretty face will always make him beloved in the fandom, who will inevitably rationalize or downgrade his evilness, and there's no guarantee that the producers themselves won't cave in and make him Pet The Dog. They also tend to be more prone to anti-heroism than unattractive villains who are just bad, because surely a beautiful person can't be all bad! While it could be considered an effect of Evil Is Cool, it's much easier to imagine a villain do a Heel Face Turn if he's got the kind of face associated with a hero, just like he becomes okay to kill off in a more monstrous form. Of course, unrepentantly evil and attractive villains will benefit from this trope making others horrible judges of character.

This standard is even more mandatory for heroines, especially those starring in male-oriented series.

What constitutes as "attractive" for the lead varies with society: while American guys drool over impossibly skinny cheerleaders or curvy sexpots, the Japanese prefer their cute schoolgirls and Troubled But Cute bishonen. The message is pretty much the same all around, though: you can't be truly happy or heroic unless you look the part.

It almost goes without saying that this is very old; an attempt was even made in the 19th Century to quantify this attitude into the "science" of physiognomy, which posited a direct correlation between appearance and moral character.

Literature has more success averting this trope than visual media, for obvious reasons. It's easier to read about a guy who is allegedly unattractive, than it is to actually watch somebody and be constantly looking at said unattractiveness. That, and lead actors break the curve, Hollywood Homely tends to cover the real-life range from pleasant-looking to chiseled marble Apollo. A vast majority of "ugly" book characters end up surprisingly attractive in movies. Just wait for the Fail Polish.

Ugly Hero Good Looking Villain is a specific subversion of this. For the Inverted Trope, see Evil Is Sexy, although the two aren't mutually exclusive. For animals and more nonhuman characters, see What Measure Is A Non Cute. The trope Ugly Guy Hot Wife both subverts this and plays it painfully straight- unattractive men are shown to be good husband material, yet it still works on the assumption that because the wife is hot, that he was lucky in love even if nothing else is known about her.

May not apply in the case of The Beautiful People if they are so beautiful that they don't seem human.

(Mostly) Straight examples

Anime and Manga

Discussed in Gundam Wing: When OZ goes to apprehend Duo's space shuttle, Lady Une muses that they should kill the pilot if he's attractive but let him live if he's ugly. Her reason: they can use an ugly pilot as a scapegoat when they do bad stuff; but if the pilot is handsome, the people would be more likely to sympathize and follow him. Her orders, however, are just to kill him. In the actual series, pretty much everyone is attractive, so it's the same difference.
In Naruto almost any ninja whose special abilities involve some sort of physical abnormality is a bad guy. The average member of the Sound village is likely to have some sort of implant that they use as a weapon, and a large number also have cursed seals who's second stage gives them monstrous forms. Villains with sympathetic origins who turned evil were originally normal looking, but have grown deformed (Sasori, Pain). Villains with no sympathetic angle include a shark-man, a guy covered in mouths, and a guy with a patchwork body that's filled with ropes.
- While their bodies are quite deformed, both Sasori and Deidara's (the aforementioned "guy covered in mouth") faces are quite Bishonen. As a side note, the members of Akatsuki weren't even originally planned to be human, which has a noticeable impact on the average member.
- Jugo is a great demonstrator of this as he is monstrous look only when he's evil.
- There are only two ninja clans in Konoha whose abilities involve any form of physical abnormality; the Akimichi clan and the Aburame clan. Choji Akimichi is constantly derided because of his weight, even though his powers require him to be heavy. Shino Aburame's body is filled with bugs, and he uses them to great effect. Despite this, he is among the least commonly shown of the Rookie 9, and his most notable trait is that everybody seems to think he's creepy.
- Of course they are two of the most liked characters (in the US at least) because of there powers
Bishonen Rokudo Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn, shown before to be a horrible, Manipulative Bastard with no regard for human life, is later given a few humanizing traits and is depicted as not being completely evil, with hints that he's just being stubborn with hiding that he doesn't really hate Tsuna anymore (most notably stated by Tsuna, who is convinced that he is, deep down, not such a bad person). He's still pretty darn evil, though.
In the manga Bio Meat, the older and uglier you are, the more likely you will be a completely nasty person who gets eaten alive.
See the above quote from Demashita Powerpuff Girls Z. When they first encounter each other, Blossom and Mojo Jojo get along just fine, and Blossom instructs Mojo on a good way to eat a sandwich cookie. However, when they both realize that one of them is beautiful and the other is ugly, they realize that they must be enemies, and they start fighting.

Comic Books

Jack Kirby's Eternals are physical specimens of literally godlike perfection, while the Deviants are hideously mutated.
- Subvert, about half of the Eternals are jerks, or Complete Monsters, while the Deviants arn't that evil.
In an Early arc of X Men Spinoff The New Mutants, one of the characters, Karma was possessed by the evil Shadow King, who caused her to become morbidly obese from overeating. In the following arc (after Karma rejoins the team), Karma is promptly (and conveniently) dropped into a desert where she sheds her fat in record time and become a total babe.
- Although X-Men is often pretty good about averting this by having heroes like the Beast who have really freakish mutations.
In Elf Quest, the distinction between in-group (elves) and out-group (humans and trolls) has been striking from the get-go. Elves are the embodiment of otherworldly beauty, while Humans Are Ugly and idiosyncratic and trolls are bulbous and warty. While a few humans and the occasional troll are easy on the eyes, they are nothing compared to the elves — even evil elves, even genocidal elves, they're never ugly. See, humans are The Enemy and trolls are untrustworthy, but "All elves are one." You can kill humans and trolls in self-defense, but Elves Don't Kill Elves no matter the provocation.
- Recent years have seen these principles change. More and more humans have been joining the list of allies, so the in-group/out-group distinction is weakening significantly. The "Elves Don't Kill Elves" prohibition has been broken on a few occasions and no longer elicits the agonizing guilt that Strongbow felt over Kureel (the first such killing).
- Now that Wendy Pini isn't [always] doing the art herself, certain artists draw humans all but indistinguishable from elves (which means as beautiful as elves). They look so similar that a human wearing ceremonial elf ears leaves you wondering, not about the ears, but if his thumb and four fingers are a mistake — a confusion that would never have been possible in the early books.
Arguably, even the mighty Watchmen falls victim to this: most of the characters are depicted as reasonably attractive (at least given their age) while the two more morally dubious characters, Rorschach and The Comedian, are depicted far less so. The former, a redhead covered in spots and bruises, finds his appearance so abhorrent that he actually refers to his mask as his "face", while the latter has a hideous facial scar reminiscent of the smiley face on the cover of the book, although he retains a certain swaggering sex appeal.
- Although it is also partially averted with the morally ambiguous and highly controversial Ozymandias, who is very good-looking. To call the character something as dismissive as "villainous" would be to miss the whole damn point of the book.
- You think Dan and Laurie are 'reasonably attractive'? They're decidedly ordinary, especially Dan.
- The Comedian only received his disfiguring scares after a lifetime of horrible, ugly behavior, his case might be an inversion. As for Rorshach, even while morally dubious, by the end of the book he's the only one standing up for truth and justice, arguably an aversion.

Film

In The Wizard of Oz, the Good Witch is pretty, and the Wicked Witches are ugly. Glinda says straight up that "Only bad witches are ugly".
Played painfully straight in The Sequel to Zenon. When the aliens finally show up at the end, they are Energy Beings who travel in a butterfly/manta ray style space ship that shifts between pastel, easter egg colors of pink, blue, yellow, etc. When a characters asks if these aliens might be hostile, Zenon replies, with no irony and a completely straight face, "Nobody could have a ship that beautiful and be evil."
At the start of Unbreakable, Samuel L Jackson describes a comic cover in art-critic detail, commenting on the villain's inhumanely big head. At the end of the movie, Mr. Glass realizes he was always meant to be the villain because of his brittle bones.
This trope is always so much fun to observe whenever Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots pop up. If the story is focusing on Mary, she will be rather pretty, whilst Elizabeth will look like an ugly old hag. But if it's Elizabeth in the spotlight, she's always portrayed as having far more grace and beauty, whilst Mary is transformed into a woman whose bitterness is shown quite clearly on her plain (if she's lucky) face. Expect the ugly one to have crows' feet, and any ugly Elizabeth will have hair exactly the wrong shade of red and far too much white makeup on.
- The irony of this is that both Elizabeth and Mary would have been seen as absolutely freaking gorgeous in our time at age twenty-five - they both resembled Nicole Kidman in face and in body. Neither of them aged as well, but what can you expect in the 16th century?
This comes in three layers in The Tale Of Despereaux. The cute mouse and porcelain-skinned princess are good, the plain but not hideous Mig and Rascuro are susceptible to evil urges, and the ugly other rats are Always Chaotic Evil.

Literature

Played (painfully) straight in The Inheritance Cycle where the only reasons that the main character can come up with that don't make him exactly like the bad guy is that he doesn't have scars on his back. Yeah...
In English literature, the most common Older Than Radio example of this trope is The Picture of Dorian Gray, even though it is a deconstruction of this trope. Wilde was critiquing the commonly held belief during the 19th Century that physical appearance both reflected and was influenced by morality, piety, and social status.
In Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy, we are sympathetic (politically) towards the D'Angeline people, who are all beautiful. That is not to say that there aren't D'Angeline villains, and non-D'Angeline heroes, but for the most part, this fits into the trope.
- More often than not, Non-D'Angeline characters of importance are either attractive or 'skilled' enough for their heritage to not matter.
In Atlas Shrugged, all the protagonists are strikingly beautiful, while the villains' ugliness is often mentioned in connection with their ridiculous beliefs.
- Though it must be said, Rand did partially subvert this trope in The Fountainhead: not many people find the redheaded Howard Roark attractive, while Peter Keating is effectively described as handsome in a bland sort of way (until he starts to let himself go in the latter stages of his career). The trope is played straight in the case of the heroine and villain however, who are respectively described as stunningly attractive (surprise, surprise) and rather thin and weedy.
In the Earth's Children series by Jean Auel, Ayla is considered hideous by her Neanderthal foster family. She is described as being tall, muscular, blond, and blue-eyed - stereotypically lovely - but she suffers from her adoptive Neanderthal family treating her as ugly throughout Clan of the Cave Bear. It isn't until the second book, after she is exiled from her clan, that she runs into someone who looks like her and treats her as if she's beautiful. Strangely, though she is raised by the Neanderthals and considers herself ugly, she has no problem adjusting to other tall, light-haired people and never considers them unattractive.
Played almost laughably straight with Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter, whose beauty the narrator goes into ridiculous amounts of detail describing. On the opposite side, her neglectful and vengeful husband has mildly deformed shoulders and becomes more malevolent-looking as the book goes on.
- A bit of a subversion exists, though, in that the main narrative thrust of the book centers around the fact that Hester is a sinner and an adulteress, and how she suffers for her actions; it's somewhat debatable as to just how much sympathy Nathaniel Hawthorne has for his character.
- This applies even more straightly to Hester's daughter (who is even named Pearl), though, as among other things Hawthorne drives home the fact (with a piledriver) that the sins of the parents do not apply to the innocent children. And in the mid-19th century, some people really needed to be told that, to be honest.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth world non-("evil")ugliness and beauty was the original natural default. The 'evil'-ugly creatures/things are the result of malicious corruption (by others or the self), e.g. the orcs (who are not a natural race, but made by the first Dark Lord). On the other hand, there are also people/creatures which appear or can appear as extremely beautiful and are nonetheless evil or comitting atrocities, e.g. Sauron and various Elves. Sometimes other peoples are percieved as ugly by the POV-peoples, but in these cases it is most often not an extreme-evil-ugliness, and sometimes just acknownledged cultural bias.
- InThe Fellowship of The Ring — the book, mind — Aragorn/Strider is described as looking rather weatherbeaten and intimidating; he inspires Frodo's famous line about how an actually evil person would "look fair, but feel foul". That didn't stop the movie-version from putting the handsome-in-a-weatherbeaten way Viggo Mortensen in the role; Frodo's line still works in a way (as he is implying that looks should not be used as a judge of character), but something is lost in the adaptation.
  - Because Strider's knocked-about appearance is mostly a result of his hard life up to this point, with every step he takes towards claiming his kingship he seems to become more physically handsome. This could be because he's decided to bathe and wash his hair, though.
An example who was once a subversion: To the vast surprise of most people, Lancelot in La Morte d'Arthur and other early Arthurian works is not the handsome "Prince Charming" figure he tends to be portrayed as in modern media, but a stocky, barrel-chested walking meat wall who is notably plain in appearance. (He's also a mentally unstable berserker given to complete psychotic breakdowns at the drop of a hat. Naturally, since John Cleese is an Arthurian scholar, Monty Python got him completely right.)
- Well, almost completely right - John Cleese may not be Viggo Mortensen, but he's a pretty good-looking guy. They pegged the personality, though.
- T.H. White takes this even further in The Ill-Made Knight, the third volume of The Once And Future King, and makes his version of Lancelot extraordinarily ugly, so much so that he is said to resemble an ape.
- Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Trilogy retained the good-looking "Prince Charming" Lancelot and then thoroughly subverted it, turning him into a cowardly, snivelling, petulant bastard with no redeeming features whatsoever. He didn't even have the good grace to be magnificent about it. One could argue in fact that Lancelot is the major villain of the series- he's certainly one of the least likable characters.
The series Twilight is especially notorious for this trope, seeing as Bella's narration does nothing but describe other characters' physical appearances and how wonderful or horrible it makes them as a being. Depending on how they look. You can tell how important and "nice" a character's going to be based on how Bella finds them attractive. The only exception to this rule is Rosalie, who's depicted as shallow and vain, but that's just Meyer expressing her blonde-female hate.
- In Breaking Dawn this is completely reversed when Bella decides to keep Reneesme, so Rosalie ends up being a "nice" person anyway.
In Pride And Prejudice the first thing characters note about one another is how physically attractive a person is. Considering the original title of the book was First Impressions...
Phantom of the Opera, anyone?

Live Action TV

Joked at in The Fresh Prince of Bel-air with Hilary.
Hilary: Heaven is this place where everyone is beautiful. And hell is, like, The Valley.
Perhaps surprisingly, given its self-awareness, Buffy The Vampire Slayer often falls victim to this trope. Apart from the Slayers themselves (who are all stunning), all the other major good guy characters are attractive, even Hollywood Homely Willow, while the demons are usually hideous. True, there are some good looking villains, (Spike, Angelus, Faith, etc.), but most of these characters were either very minor or ended up performing a Heel Face Turn, or ended up looking really, really monstrous. Glory is the only good-looking seasonal Big Bad who was presented entirely without sympathy. (Although The First, able to look like anyone it wants to as long as it's dead and given to appearing like Buffy, might count.)
While pretty much everyone on Supernatural is ridiculously pretty, this trope was directly referenced in the episode Folsom Prison Blues, in which Dean and Sam are thrown in jail. While their female lawyer keeps hearing that Dean's a monster, she changes her mind completely and even helps them out when he uses his looks to convince her he's innocent.
Heroes is a pretty big offender. You can always tell the new character is a good guy if they look like a model. Sylar's the only exception.
- Your mileage may vary on that though.
- Adam Monroe is pretty attractive as well, considering he's the second biggest bad the series has had. Most of the series villians are old men, it might have more to do with that than anything. They're also mostly the heads of corporations or politicians, which might justify the trope.
Played uncomfortably straight with the Cylons on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica - the good (or at least sympathetic) Cylons are played by attractive young actors and actresses (Six, Boomer/Athena, D'Anna, Anders, Chief Tyrol), the more morally doubtful (Leoben, Tigh) are older and less conventionally attractive, and the outright evil (Cavil) is the ugliest and oldest of the lot. Then again, Tory is both young and attractive and also morally doubtful, and her actions have resulted in her seeming far less sympathetic.
- And given D'Anna was willing even in her most recent (S4) appearance to wipe out humanity even after they helped resurrect her she probably deserves to be in the morally doubtful region along with Tory.
- Battlestar Galactica also has the (only) perfectly upstanding character Karl Agathon, named after this trope (see "Kalos kai Agathos" above).
Played straight in the original series of Star Trek with Captain Kirk. Gene Roddenberry was originally opposed to casting a bald lead for Star Trek The Next Generation due to this trope, but changed his mind after seeing Patrick Stewart's audition. Stewart was later called the "The Sexiest Man on TV" by TV Guide, bald head and all; this is telling.
X5s in Dark Angel tend to be attractive, but that's down to genetic engineering (and being played by Jessica Alba or Jensen Ackles). Manticore transgenics with more bizarre appearances are also generally good guys.
None of the Doctors of Doctor Who were victims of savage beatings with the ugly stick (or at least not for long), but most of them are or were unconventionally handsome. Most subversive is Tom Baker, who was not what you'd call the most handsome of men, yet was easily the most popular and well-recognised of the Doctors in the classic series. (Though that second is partly longevity.) The current (Tenth) Doctor, David Tennant, receives female attention because he's one of the more attractive examples of Nerds Are Sexy. The younger, more classically handsome Doctors - Peter Davison (Five), Paul McGann (Eight), Tennant - tend to get more attention from the Shippers. And the companions tend to be outright attractive!
The major subplot of the American Gothic episode "Eye of the Beholder" plays with and then toes the line of this trope from the heroic perspective of a minor character. In order to obtain custody of his 'son' Caleb, Sheriff Buck tries to discredit Dr. Crower as a potential legal guardian by revealing his past difficulties with alcohol. To attest to this, he needs the aid of an orderly at the hospital who worked with Matt before he came to Trinity. When the orderly refuses, Buck sends his wife a magic mirror which swiftly turns her into a tempting seductress. The orderly breaks the mirror...which also horribly disfigures his wife. Freed from the spell, she urges him to refuse Buck's deal and stand by his friend Matt instead, and he professes to love her no matter what she looks like. Despite this and the name of the episode, the orderly inexplicably does Buck's bidding—and even though his testimony is as unbiased as possible, and Buck doesn't get his hands on Caleb due to a delicious Bait And Switch Chekovs Gun from earlier in the episode, the sheriff still keeps his end of the deal by rewarding the orderly, restoring his wife's beauty so they can leave town in peace and good conscience. Sigh.

Tabletop Games

The goddess Sune of the Forgotten Realms seems to wholeheartedly buy into this trope. Supposedly the goddess of love, she's also the goddess of beauty, and earlier editions had game mechanic rules stating that her clergy had to satisfy a minimum level of physical attractiveness (as measured by the charisma stat) in order to serve. Apparently Sune thinks that only beautiful people deserve love, even though Word Of God is that she's Chaotic Good.
- To the contrary-Sune's dogma is to promote beauty and love even among the ugly. The vanity and prejudice is chiefly the result of her clergy's collective vanity refusing to train clerics who were unattractive-a cleric could independently venerate Sune and receieve clerical abilities even if he/she had low charisma. He/she just wouldn't find a welcome in the church.
The Hero System games, most notably Champions, postulate that the average man on the street has stats of 8 in all catagories, including physical appearance. Player Character on the other hand get a 10 in each catagory because they are the heroes. So your "average hero" is notably better looking than a regular schmoe. The stat that reflects your good looks is also by far the easiest one to buy up, so most heroes end up having supermodel good looks because there is very little downside to it.
Dungeons And Dragons' Fourth Edition removed or uglied up every attractive monster in the game. (Dryads? Now look like small Treants with breasts. Yes, trees with breasts. Nymphs? Removed entirely.)
- Harpies, on the other hand...
- It does point out that dryads can use illusions to appear as eladrin and elves.
More Dungeons And Dragons: Orcs, goblins, trolls, ogres, and other "savage" humanoids are bestial in appearance and almost always portrayed as always evil in official game material and most campaigns. Of course, individual DMs may portray them however they want, and there's nothing stopping you from running a game with a tribe of noble, heroic orcs.

Video Games

Played straight in Drakengard. Another layer is added on with the impossibly beautiful and pacifistic elves and the Nightmare Fuel-inspired design for the monsters, who are bloodthirsty and primitive. These other creatures are rarely seen, however. And really, what's more beautiful than a baby?

Western Animation

On Justice League (and Justice League Unlimited), only two of the big seven are even remotely not conventionally attractive. J'onn, while green, is a shapeshifter who can look however he wants, and Hawkgirl's "weird" look is angelic wings. Now, let's take a look at the villains: Gorilla Grodd, Ultra-Humanite, Parasite, Shade, the White Martians...
- Except the female ones. And Luthor.
  - Teen titans is the same way.
- Not surprising, given that they're based on comicbook characters (easily the worst offender anywhere). Ultra-Humanite happens to also be a subversion in the comics as his power is stealing bodies and he did once steal the body of a beautiful woman.
The titular heroes of Gargoyles are superficially ugly monsters (especially Brooklyn), which barely hides their heroic natures. Some fans of the show find them rather cute.
- Goliath - if you can get past the wings, fangs, and talons - could be seen as downright handsome. And let's face it, any man with Keith David's voice is going to have less trouble with the ladies than he might otherwise.
- Brooklyn - if drawn in the right way and angle - gets points for his exotic nature as a Furry.
- Furthermore, the gargoyles of the London Clan are "furry" themselves and sometimes stunningly good looking, such as Staghart.
- And most of the females? Not really ugly at all (although the one we see the most is not all that good either).
Played straight and inverted in Lady Lovely Locks: the hero, ''Lady Lovely Locks" is good and has lovely blonde hair, while her enemy is Duchess Raven Waves, a beautiful princess and troublemaker. (This series was made to appeal to young girls.)
In a sort of Redemption Equals Beauty, Bramble, the villain of the Bitsy Bears pilot is relatively unattractive, with a dry bob haircut, but the instant she thinks about reforming, she suddenly becomes more attractive with long, wavy hair. (Seriously, it changes between frames. You can see it starting at 3:45)

Real Life

During the Victorian era, this concept was widely held to be true; a person's physical appearance was a reflection on their morality and social standing. The introduction discusses 19th Century quackery discourses of Phrenology and Physiognomy as an attempt to quantify and qualify these dubious claims. While the latter discipline was not unique to the 19th Century, its influence and popularity reached a zenith during the Georgian, Regency, and especially, Victorian eras.
Real life example: in Spanish, "to be" can be translated as two different verbs (ser and estar) "ser buena" (to be good) means to be a good/nice person, and "estar buena" (litteraly translated also: "to be good") means being physically attractive (although usually "hot" more than "beautiful")

Subversions and played-with examples