Misuse: Ugly Guy Hot Wife

I understand that this is a pretty subjective trope, but the article's picture does a great job as a demonstration. However, a good amount of the examples, particular in the live-action section, aren't really suitable because of personal preference and general confusion with the trope. A good chunk of these examples would actually be more appropriate in Hollywood Homely. After all, in TV land, not being model attractive means you're ugly, but that is not the point of this trope. A lot of the examples seem to lean that way. Examples should really be limited to relationships in which one partner is significantly more attractive than the other.

I agree with this. A lot of examples seem to be "this girl is hot and so I'm gonna treat her partner like he's the ugliest guy ever."

The problem is, no matter how often you trim the "Average Guy" examples, a dozen more will pop up overnight since nobody reads the rule to leave them out.

edited 13th Jan '11 10:49:19 PM by DesertDragon

Maybe the problem with this trope (besides being too subjective) is that it's a generalization of multiple tropes, causing confusion.

The trope is actually not subjective, as about 75% of the examples have a remark In-Universe that, yes, the wife is far more attractive than the husband. The misuse is that, when it isn't commented upon, what constitutes an ugly guy is largely up to personal opinion, and even average looking guys (like JD from Scrubs in the description) are going to be labeled ugly next to typical model-esque background extras. It's kind of like Dawson Casting, the trope exists regardless of personal opinion but editors are widening the guideposts.

Like the description already says, if the example is borderline then it isn't an example.

Maybe we should require an in-universe mention of the differing attractiveness of the members of the couple?

Any examples which don't give an episode in which the fact that the guy is ugly is mentioned can be dumped. I think a simple S0E00 notation should suffice.

Original Poster of the trope (and editor who included all the notes on the main page that everyone ignores) here. I have similar reservations about how many people tossed in every example they could think of, but I try to edit out the bad cases when I see them. I even used JD from Scrubs as a kind of litmus tests for that reason. How many particularly bad examples are left? I took out a couple more just today.

I'm unsure about leaving out all examples OTHER than what's been remarked on in-universe. There's a lot of strong examples of this that've likely gone unremarked (as if it were some un-notable thing), simply because of modern Hollywood casting. Maybe stick in a YMMV tag for some cases (there are still people who insist on certain classically-ugly guys as hot).

edited 23rd Feb '11 3:17:24 AM by Jabroniville

Suggest renaming/rewrting this as "The Reacher And The Settler", after a phrase used in How I Met Your Mother about how in some relationships there is a "Reacher" who reaches for someone out of his/her league, and a "Settler" who settles for the less hot spouse.

Edit: On second thought, I realize not ALL the examples in the page would fit that. It would be better to create that as a sister-trope, with all the non-ugly examples falling under it (basically any couple where "hotness" in a little in inbalance). That would clean up the page AND give a place to put the lesser examples (which ARE common enough to be a trope).

Anybody interested go ahead and take it to YKTTW; I'm too lazy to do it myself.

edited 10th Apr '11 12:29:34 AM by Darkmane

How would the one not be the other But Lampshaded, and how would the other not be the one But Subjective?

I actually posted another repair topic forgetting that we had this one. I think one thing we can do is an Out Of Your League trope, where it's established that one of the partners has far more options than the other does. The main difference being that from an audience perspective, the couple does look rather good together. The "Out of Your League" part is largely social than straight appearance. A couple of examples of that is Leonard and Penny from The Big Bang Theory and the main couple in Shes Out Of My League.

But I don't know how to fully fix the trope outside of making a purely subjective trope "Woman Who Are Too Hot for Any Man To Do Them Justice."

A lot of that is just "Geeky Guy Gets the Girl" which is another trope on this site already. I don't think this trope needs "fixing"- it just needs careful watching and editing for silly examples.

Should there be a real life section in this trope?

There already is.

I know, however that doesn't mean there should be one there in the first place.

I don't see why. Especially not a Real Life section that is nearly 100 lines long while all the rest of the examples combined are only 330 lines long (and would be even shorter with the natter trimmed.) — almost a quarter of the page.

edited 22nd Apr '11 10:45:58 AM by Madrugada

so......Can we cut it?

It might be an idea. It seems to be that most of the really dumb examples (ie. "I have a crush on this lady, so her boyfriend must be unworthy!"- Russel Brand is still by-far the worst example yet) end up there. A lot of the time it's a Take That! at an ugly male celebrity (I've been guilty of that myself), etc.

I would actually recommend a blanket "Do not add suggestions here- it happens, especially in the celebrity world".

OK, any resolution to this?

Zapped it. Please correct me if I'm wrong but the general ruling has been if a real life section gets too big, it gets cut, besides all of the examples there were YMMV

Sidenote: this trope can probably be explained clearly and concisely in one sentence, there's no reason for the trope description to be as long as it is.

edited 17th Jun '11 1:10:09 PM by captainpat

It's "causes problems", taking over the examples is considered a problem.

I wondered why it took so long to do this- I wasn't emotionally invested in the Real Life section in either case, so I don't mind it dying. I wasn't aware of a "TV Tropes Policy" regarding Real Life sections, though.

I re-added the Folder, but included a note not to add examples- otherwise someone's gonna come along and go "oh hey- there's no Real Life section yet!"

I think we normally add a No Real Life Examples Please line up at the top.

We have several Real Life guides. One being that they always go at the bottom of the page, denoting their lack of importance, and the other main one being that as soon as they're a problem, they get cut.

If Real Life examples were deleted, shouldn't the page image also be changed, since it shows real people?

edited 24th Aug '11 2:13:29 AM by Aquila89

Probably should open an image picking thread on that. [1]◊ Roger rabbit would be a good example.

Isn't that kind of a weird example? I mean, Roger is not ugly, he's a rabbit.