Delusions of Beauty

Fantasy vs. Reality

Yzma: But first I need to update my resume. Kronk, how do you spell "gorgeous"?
Kronk: Yeah, you, uh, you don't spell that with a clear conscience.

— The Emperor's New School

A character is the most beautiful/handsome person around... but only in their own imagination.

It is said that people tend to see themselves as more attractive than they really are. A combination of self-enhancement bias and the reversed image we usually see in the mirror often give us a false impression of what we actually look like. But characters in fiction often take this self-enhancement filter to a whole new level, where their delusions of beauty have no basis in reality at all.

These are characters who might be ugly, plain, old, or overweight (or any combination thereof), but still see themselves as a sexy Head-Turning Beauty. They may try to invoke Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful! while lacking the assets to get the desired results. They might also try to force themselves on anyone who takes their fancy and get offended/confused that their target would turn down a big "catch" like them.

If they have an Imagine Spot of what they look like, their imagined selves probably don't resemble their true appearance in the slightest—with the delusion version of the character having a more conveniently attractive form. They might even get Distracted by My Own Sexy, and what they see in the mirror is their idealized self-image than what they actually look like.

The inverse of Obliviously Beautiful and I Am Not Pretty. Compare/contrast Crush Filter, when someone looks more attractive to another person (who has a crush on them) than they really are.

Related to Casanova Wannabe, Urban Legend Love Life, Of Course I'm Not a Virgin, and Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today? See also Narcissist and Pride. May overlap with White-Dwarf Starlet, where a once-popular celebrity is in denial that they're getting old and past their prime.

For other delusionally confident characters, see Small Name, Big Ego, Giftedly Bad, Know-Nothing Know-It-All, and Boisterous Weakling.

Not to be confused with Self-Fanservice, when artists draw their favorite characters as being sexier and better-looking than they actually are in canon.

Note: Do NOT list characters who are actually considered beautiful by other characters (unless their interest is considered "weird" in-universe), even if the viewer doesn't agree with the story's assessment of the character's attractiveness. Also, No Real Life Examples, Please!.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Gals!: The ganguro sisters, while not that ugly, are drawn with Gag Lips that makes them look less conveniently pretty than the other female characters. They still think that they're as attractive as the main girls, if not more so, and don't understand why Ran and the others are more popular with guys than they are.
• Hell Teacher Nube: One chapter features a New Transfer Student who is short, hairy, and looks like a monkey, but is a Casanova Wannabe towards the girls, and doesn't seem to notice that his classmates find his appearance repulsive. Justified since he's a Yōkai who probably has the completely wrong idea of what human women find attractive, especially since his true form is actually very good-looking.
• One Piece:
  • Alvida is a big, rotund woman with warty skin, wide lips, and too-small eyes. After eating the devil fruit, she becomes a beautiful and shapely woman, but even before her transformation, she sees herself as the most beautiful lady of the sea and would beat up anyone who disagrees with her using an iron mace.
  • Giolla believes that she's even more beautiful than Boa Hancock. In reality, she was really beautiful 14 years prior to the start of the plot. In less than three years after that, she got a Butter Face, and now she's an outright Gonk.
• Perfect Blue: Near the climax of the film, Rumi—an overweight, middle-aged woman—falls into a delusion that she is Mima, the main character who is a young, beautiful Idol Singer. As she is chasing the real Mima through the street, "Mima" is shown gracefully floating in an almost fairy-like way while her reflection shows Rumi (wearing Mima's pop idol dress) rabidly chasing her down with the intent to murder her, panting and sweating heavily.
• Rumiko Takahashi's Miniature Senior Citizens have the tendency to think that they were much better looking in their youth than they actually were.
  • Ranma ½: Happosai always depicts himself as a tall, blonde-haired Pretty Boy whenever he regales his youthful exploits to other people. However, a less biased flashback shows that he had always been the bug-eyed midget in his youth as he is at present. His nearly identical friend, Rakkyosai, likewise remembers his youthful self as a beautiful man with dark, flowing locks.
  • Rumiko Takahashi Anthology: Risa Hoshino from "One Hundred Years of Love" is a shriveled-up 92-year-old lady who lives in regret for rejecting a fellow patient's love confession and driving him to suicide. While imparting this woeful tale to the other patients and nurses, the young Risa is drawn as a stereotypical Stock Shoujo Heroine with sparkly eyes and delicate appearance, while her lost love is a handsome young man. Later, the patient she rejected (who didn't actually die, but simply lost his footing by the cliff and broke his leg), retold the story in a much less dramatic—and probably more accurate—manner. In his recollection, Risa is shown to have a stockier figure and plainer face, while he himself was a rather dorky-looking boy, with Nerd Glasses and shorn hair (the handsome man that Risa imagined him as was actually the guy she rejected him for).
• When Tanaka from Wasteful Days of High School Girls enters an Imagine Spot, she is always curvier in that story than she actually is (the flattest of the cast). Robo actually points it out.

Comic Books

• Realistically played for tragedy in the Twisted Tales story "Roomers". The only other human character we see aside from the mute old man (our viewpoint character) is a young woman who delivers his groceries. She's obese and pimple-faced with messy hair and an overall slovenly appearance, and exhibits a vaguely obnoxious personality. As she returns each week to drop off his food, the old man notices her hair and clothes gradually become neater and she starts wearing makeup, suggesting an increase in self-confidence. Finally, she shows up in a nice dress, bares her breasts to him and declares that she could have any man she wanted... Then starts to cry and leaves the apartment, never to be seen again. At this point it becomes apparent that the poor girl saw the old man as a the only male figure she knew of who wouldn't judge her for her looks, and tried to use that in a vain effort to build some self-esteem. It's a surprisingly deep characterization for someone who otherwise has no important role in the story.

Comic Strips

• Darryl in Baby Blues used to say that from one angle, he looked just like Mel Gibson. (Back when that was a point of pride.)
• Roger in Foxtrot thinks he looks like Brad Pitt, Viggo Mortensen, or other heartthrobs at times.
• Malaysian comic strip Lawak Campus has Xena (named after the character from the TV show), a thick-lipped, overweight schoolgirl who looks more like a guy, but often thinks herself as attractive, likes admiring herself in a mirror and frequently tries flirting with the comic's main protagonist, Vanness, often leading to Hilarity Ensues.

Films — Animation

• Bartok the Magnificent: When Big Bad Ludmilla drinks a potion that is supposed to increase whatever is inside the heart of the drinker tenfold on the outside, Ludmilla sings an entire song believing she is becoming more and more beautiful. In reality, she is experiencing a bit by bit, Karmic Transformation into a dragon, reflecting her evil, greedy heart. When she finally sees her true transformation, she goes on a rampage.
• Cinderella: Based on their comments when they learn about the invitation to the royal ball and their overall confidence in being able to win over the prince, Anastasia and Drizella both perceive themselves as highly attractive and fashionable. While they're not hideous to look at, they're far from strikingly beautiful and their garish-looking outfits don't help; they also regularly mock Cinderella's appearance despite her looking better than them even in rags. Their mother's overindulgence in them is implied to be the source of their delusions. That said, the sequels do reveal that Anastasia at the least is actually aware she's not that conventionally attractive and is jealous of Cinderella's more conventional beauty, with Cinderella trying to help her see that looks aren't everything and that in the right clothes she will look better.
• The Emperor's New Groove: Despite her ancient body, the main villainess Yzma is both a Fashion-Victim Villain and proud of her looks (the latter affirmed after a brawl with Kuzco accidentally turns her into a cat). Of course, this doesn't convince anybody and cements her reputation as a being "scary beyond all reason".

Literature

• In At the Sources of the Night, Erica Rose is an aging fortune-teller (and no Silver Fox) who is convinced that she is drop-dead gorgeous. She applies excessive makeup without any taste, is certain that teenagers Arlen and Kinan are struck by her beauty, and even tries to invoke Aren't You Going to Ravish Me? on them. Arlen believes that Erica's desperate wish to be beautiful is what created her evil alternate self in the mirror world that kept attacking young and pretty girls.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer!: Miki Shiba, the landlady for Mao's apartment building (and later revealed to be a powerful deity in her own right), believes that she is a classical beauty, often pointing out that the "Mi" in her name means "beautiful". She is, in fact, morbidly obese. A photograph of herself in a swimsuit that she sent to the demons from Enta Isla caused them to experience a violent burst of nausea.
• In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry views a Pensieve Flashback of a witch named Hepzibah Smith who seems to think that she's immensely beautiful and enjoys when her house-elf Hokey says so; Harry himself really begs to differ.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? has Phryne Jamil, a member of the Ishtar Familia. She is a huge, obese woman with a face that resembles a toad, but believes herself to be the most beautiful woman alive. Phryne also has the disturbing habit of kidnapping men that takes her fancy and tortures and rapes them until they are too traumatized to have sex ever again—which she sees as further evidence of her desirability because clearly those guys are so love-struck that they will never be satisfied, sexually, by anyone else.
• In James and the Giant Peach, James' aunts Spiker and Sponge, neither of whom are attractive inside or out, spend an early scene praising their own looks and tearing down the other's.
• The Stinky Cheese Man: "The Really Ugly Duckling" is about an ugly duckling who imagines turning into a beautiful swan. Unfortunately, he really is a duckling and only grows up to be an ugly duck.

Live-Action TV

• The Cry of Mann: Courtney cares a lot about her own beauty, something that becomes more exaggerated when her Sanity Slippage begins. She spirals into madness while attempting to make herself look stunning, with efforts that include putting on way too much lipstick and, at the end, covering her entire face in rhinestones. She also keeps asking her callers if she's beautiful, and most play along to avoid offending her, which means that she continues to double down on thinking her efforts are working even as she begins to look much more obviously bizarre.
• Dracula (2020): Lucy is a beautiful woman who became a vampire to retain her good looks forever. When she does transform, she is convinced that she has achieved her goals, unaware that to everyone else she looks like a corpse covered in third and fourth-degree burns (as her family arranged for a cremation upon her supposed death). Her delusions are shown when looks at her reflection and sees herself as she was when she was human. She only realizes the truth when she sees a photo of herself. She immediately has a Freak Out that she'll be stuck as an ugly and deformed monster for eternity and pleads with Seward to kill her.
• Linda, the promiscuous, foul-mouthed harridan in Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, seems to live with this delusion about herself. (She is played by Kathy Burke, a comic actress whose livelihood depends on her rather homely looks). As her despairing sister says:
  Lindy, love, I don't know what you see when you look in the mirror, but it ain't what the rest of the world sees.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Downplayed with Ilsa Schicklgrubermeiger, who has a huge ugly mole on her face that she's either unaware of or thinks is a beauty mark. She's completely unaware that others find it horrifying. Mosbey wonders if she even owns a mirror.

Theatre

• Downplayed in The Curious Savage; Fairy May, one of the inhabitants of the Cloisters, believes she's beautiful when she's actually fairly homely. When Mrs. Savage sees the inhabitants as they view themselves at the end, Fairy May is a lovely, well-dressed girl, standing and waving to the people admiring her.

Video Games

• Gruntilda the Wicked Witch from Banjo-Kazooie starts the game believing herself to be the most good-looking person around despite being a green-skinned old hag with terrible personal hygiene and a lazy eye. When informed that she is, at best, a distant second after Banjo's little sister Tootie, it sets the plot of the game in motion as Grunty kidnaps her and tries to steal her looks through magic. Subverted if you get a game over, as the ensuing cutscene has the beauty-stealing going off without a hitch and leaves Grunty conventionally attractive.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Oliver is a connoisseur of beauty who considers himself to be the most beautiful of all, even though he's actually a fat Gonk.
• Lucky Tower: The protagonist, Von Wanst, is quite the narcissist who constantly brags about his great beauty among other things, even though he's an overweight knight.
• Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door believes herself to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she's actually an ugly old crone with a hunched back. Humorously, one of Beldam's favorite insults towards her younger sister, Vivian, is to call her ugly, even though Vivian is the actual Cute Witch of the Shadow Sirens.
• Hanako Ohtani from Persona 4 believes herself to be one of the prettiest girls in school. She's actually a morbidly obese Gonk-looking girl with the personality to match.

Web Animation

• Etra chan saw it!:
  • Hiiragi thinks that he is attractive after being praised by his friends for marrying Yuri, who recently became attractive after losing her weight. His delusions eventually escalates to the point where he decides to hit on other women, who are understandably creeped out by his behavior.
  • Akane thinks she is still the same beautiful woman from 20 years ago, despite the fact that her face started aging. She also looks down on Azami for looking too "old" despite both of them being in their 40s.
• PONY.MOV: In "DRESS.MOV", Rarity is morbidly obese, but believes that she's drop-dead gorgeous.
  Rarity: [preening in front of a mirror while making a grotesque smile] Oh, I truly am the most beautiful pony in Equestria! To gaze upon me is to know divinity itself!

Web Comics

• Dominic Deegan: The first major turning point in Dominic's life comes from Croona Travoria suffering from this. Despite her unkempt hair and a face that's little more than skin and bones, she comes to Dominic asking to see if his second sight can confirm she's the best looking in the land.
  Dominic: (thinking) It's frightening because she's serious.

Western Animation

• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: A downplayed, situational example occurs in "Mind Pollution"; Skumm starts selling a designer drug called Bliss and manages to hamstring the Planeteers by getting Linka's cousin to give her drugged food, leaving her mind too cloudy to use her ring. While Linka is flirting with Wheeler and offering him a pill, he pushes her over to a mirror so that she can see what the drug is doing to her physically. She laughs and says she looks beautiful. Ordinarily, Linka is gorgeous and even with the drug affecting her body she's good-looking. However, she's red-eyed, haggard, and obviously the worse for wear to anyone who's not under the influence; she's just too deep in denial to see it.
• Prince Merkimer from Disenchantment believes he is the most handsome prince in the land. He's overweight with a pig-like nose. He's finally brought down to earth when he's turned into a pig.
• DuckTales: A Running Gag with Flintheart Glomgold is that, despite being short and pudgy, he always draws himself as a tall, muscular duck.
• The Emperor's New School has Yzma try to add the word "gorgeous" to her resume, despite looking like an old crone. Lampshaded by Kronk, who tells her that she shouldn't make that claim with a good conscience.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Duchess considers herself beautiful. She has yellow skin, a nose like an elephant trunk, an upside down eye, a vertical mouth full of sharp teeth, and every resident in the house finds her ugly.
• Gadget Boy & Heather: Big Bad Spydra is an ambiguous example since her face is never shown on-screen, but seeing her petrifies or paralyses people depending on episode, and her Servile Snarker Boris also seems to imply her "supreme beauty" is all in her head. The only characters to call her beautiful with guaranteed sincerity (i.e. not fearing retribution if they say otherwise) are the spider aliens from "The Day the Gadget Boy Stood Still".
• The Oblongs: Helga Phugly is a fat, toad-like girl whose Fat Slob tendencies border on Body Horror and is unsurprisingly one of the unpopular kids. But in her mind, she's thin and attractive, with hundreds of boyfriends, and best friends with the Debbies' clique, and no one can convince her otherwise.
• The Simpsons: In several Imagine Spots, Homer sees himself as a muscular hunk, when in reality he's an overweight slob.
• One early episode of Star vs. the Forces of Evil pits the protagonists against a large monstrous princess who falsely believes she and Star are so physically similar that she can switch faces with her to fool the guards into taking her to St. Olga's in her place.

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