"He's nice," said Tawneee. "And he's very dependable," said Tawneee. And, as if dimly aware that this was still not sufficient, she added sadly, "If you must know, he's the first boy who's ever asked me out." [...] There were goddesses who'd kill to look like Tawneee. Angua and Sally exchanged a glance. Light dawned. Ah, that was the problem. And this one's a baaaad case.
— Thud! by Terry Pratchett
This is when a character is seen as so attractive that she is never asked out, because anyone with half a brain would realize that a girl like her would reject a guy like him out of hand. It's obvious she's out of his league, so why bother to ask?
The girl, on the other hand, feels unable to ask him herself, whether because of social custom, historical imperative, or some other reason. However, she isn't out of his league at all. In fact, so many guys have refused to ask her out on the grounds that she's out of their league that she begins to feel unwanted and ask if there's something wrong with her. She will also often feel inadequate and very lonely, and this in turn compounds the problem of her not being able to ask for herself; obviously there is a reason nobody wants her, and she too is afraid of rejection, making this cyclic.
Related to I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me, but that trope is when a girl feels very ordinary next to a hero, yet he wants her anyway. This is when a guy feels too inadequate or ordinary to have a chance with the girl, and how she feels as a result of so many guys feeling this way.
This trope is not Always Female, but because an important part of the situation is that she cannot simply ask him, it tends to be a female trope. Leads to I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me if she does simply ask him. Related to So Beautiful, It's a Curse, Green-Eyed Monster and also Beauty Is Bad — if other females act bitchy to the girl just because they think she's pretty and therefore a bitch. Those whose beauty is of the intimidating, self-sufficient type often have this trope.
On whether or not this is Truth in Television, one view states that this happens in real life because of unconscious social cues sent out all the time, causing others to modify their behavior accordingly. The other view, however, states that because Most Writers Are Male, and therefore unable to fully empathize with the female mind, that the girl's loneliness and desperation for male company may be used wrongly, instead of introducing real-life complexities.
This trope might be the constant companion of someone who is an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, be it isolation from guys or from girls.
Compare and contrast The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction, when a man is so unattractive that any attention he gets from beautiful women is probably due to ulterior motives. Also compare So Beautiful, It's a Curse. Overlaps with Cannot Talk to Women, in that this woman causes that effect on everybody.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Invoked in ½ Prince by the titular character Prince, whose good looks attracts mobs of girls to swarm him. To defend himself from this, he adapted a look of self confidence and intimidation so that even though he'll still turn heads and have on lookers constantly, they'll feel too intimidated to approach him.
- In Azumanga Daioh, Sakaki is an extraordinarily tall and athletic girl with several Crowning Moments of Awesome under her belt. But she's also very shy and affectionate. Other students are scared to talk to her either because they think she's too awesome or because she's intimidating. She wind ups often wishing she'd get invited into club activities, since she's too timid to reach out for them herself. She got her wish when she fell in with Chiyo and her friends.
- Himemiya Chikane from Destiny of the Shrine Maiden. Lampshaded by a character, who says that "simply having the courage to directly ask her out makes one a hero". Even the girls feel intimidated by her charm. Deconstructed that in a way, it made Chikane a Broken Ace, and the fact that only the main heroine, Himeko Kurusugawa, befriended her so casually that she fell in love with her and was tortured with their forbidden romance.
- Gender-inverted in Family Complex. Harumi, the eldest son of The Beautiful Elite Sakamoto family, is so handsome that everyone in his school treats him like a king, making him feel isolated from his peers. And because his wannabe servants are very overprotective towards him, girls are scared to come close to him.
- Played for Laughs in Gals!. Aya thinks at one point that boys are too intimidated by her looks and brains to ask her out.
- Kurimiya suffers from this and more in Glass no Megami. She has also spent a lot of her life traveling from place to place abroad so that when she finally comes back to Japan it just adds to her feeling lonely and isolated.
- Himemiya Yukio from Gokujou Drops. She's jealous about how her girlfriend/servant Komari can get close to people so easily. As Komari put it, "Yukio-chan's fans are weird".
- Handa-kun is about an unfortunate youth who thinks he is hated by everyone else at school because they are avoiding him thanks to this trope being in effect.
- Haruhi Suzumiya is an odd example; boys ask her out, but because she has rejected all of them, everyone who hasn't (including Kyon, who she is actually interested in) assumes there's no point in trying. It's something like a rite of passage; students do it because all their peers have done it, not because anybody really expects it to go anywhere.
- Hinagiku of Hayate the Combat Butler, especially with her being rather cool and prickly in earlier chapters (before we started seeing her vulnerable side more often). It's obvious that the guys at school crush on her, and the girls even more so, yet nobody has ever really asked her out. When Hayate went to the kendo club, the other members were seething with jealousy at Hayate calling her by her first name, implying that most of the students are rather distant with her despite her popularity. This may have something to do with her being very close to Athena, who really was unreachable to everyone else due to her aloofness.
- Hayate keeps this going by often commenting to others that Hinagiku couldn't possibly fall for a guy like him, even managing to make himself depressed a couple times thinking about it. It actually goes both ways as Hinagiku has her own insecurities and sometimes feels that Hayate couldn't like her as she isn't feminine enough. Basically it's I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me going both ways.
- Hinagiku's sister, Yukiji also seems to have gotten this when she was younger, though only Kaoru-sensei seems to still be hanging on to it.
- Happens to Iori Yoshizuki from I"s, who's so pretty and popular that pretty much nobody approaches her at school. Although there is also the fact that she's had a crush on Ichitaka for as long as he's had one on her.
- Miu Furinji from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is strongly implied to have been bullied by the girls of her former school because of her good looks and her massive knockers.
- The titular Komi-san from Komi Can't Communicate is so beautiful that everyone puts her on a pedestal and is too scared to just befriend her. It doesn't help that Komi-san is also a massive Shrinking Violet whose social anxiety keeps getting misconstrued as aloofness.
- To a milder extent, Kotobuki "Mugi" Tsumugi from K-On! suffers this trope. There is an episode about her trying to make her bandmates closer to her. She ends up making Mio cry.
- Hinata Hyuga is arguably the most beautiful girl in Naruto's class, but is also extremely shy, especially in Part I, and for the longest time, she couldn't confess her love to the titular character. She finally did in Part II, and although Naruto never directly mentioned her Love Confession, they did start to have more significant Ship Tease afterwards, beginning in the Fourth Shinobi World War Arc. The Last: Naruto the Movie is the canonical tale of how they fell in love and got Happily Married.
- One of the reasons why Kotonoha Katsura from School Days is bullied or ignored by other girls is her Aloof Dark-Haired Girl plus well-endowed appearance, which makes her pretty popular with the guys even when she wouldn't necessarily like to have their eyes on her.
- This is the reason the tall, cool, and athletic Fujiwara has no friends in Secret of the Princess. She has plenty of adoring fans at her all-girls school, but none of them are brave enough to actually try to talk to her.
- In Walkure Romanze, Celia is gorgeous, kind and bar none the best knight in the school. Because of this, people have a hard time approaching her, resulting in her having few friends and suffering from social insecurities.
Asian Animation
- In the Hello Jadoo episode "The Popularity Vote," Eunhui tries to convince herself and Jadoo that they didn't get first place because the boys think they are out of their league, and that they chose Minji over them as a safer option. The boys clarify that they voted for Minji because she's kind, while Eunhui and Jadoo are mean.
Comics
- One Archie Comic involved Reggie lying about knowing a supermodel to screw Archie out of a date with Veronica for himself. He offered to set Archie up, but the model reveals she didn't know any Reggie. Archie soon finds out that she is dateless at the moment, and when asked, she reveals everyone always assumes she's already hooked up.
- MAD Magazine: One issue featured one of their "You'll Never Win Because..." comics which revolved around this trope. At a night club, almost every man present, including the This Loser Is You focus character, decide that competing for the attention of the beautiful girl will be an exercise in futility, and turn their sights on a rather dumpy-looking girl. This not only causes said girl to think she's way more attractive than she actually is and become a haughty jerk who makes the guys jump through hoops for her attention, but the beautiful girl who everyone ignored because they thought they'd have to fight tooth and nail for her, ends up with a nerd who didn't join the tussle for the uglier girl because he didn't think he had a chance.
Fan Works
- Implied to have been the case for Firefly, "the sexiest mare at the Academy," in Dash's New Mom. When Blue Streak asked her out, after she said yes she set a new speed record flying her date to the movie theater. In the end, it worked out great for both of them.
- Happens twice in The First Of Many. Princess Cadance was glad to go out with Shining Armor because of this trope, and it went very well for them. Now Princess Twilight is going on her first date, and that isolation is breeding hysteria over the prospect that her first date might go horribly wrong.
- Zig-Zagged in Leftovers
. Kurenai's beauty attracted many admirers back when she was still in the academy, but the only ones who actively showed their affection for the very straight Kurenai were other women, while the guys wrote her off as unobtainable due to her Ice Queen nature and didn't even bother. Asuma was able to become Kurenai's boyfriend because he was the first guy to actually try to ask her out.
- Clair in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines mentions that her height and muscular arms have driven away a few men. Though it's likely this is mostly due to the men she dated being from Johto which is considered the most conservative, old-fashioned and backwater region, and despite this several characters consider her fairly attractive.
Film
- Embodied by a nameless blonde in a bar in A Beautiful Mind, where John Nash arrives at a mathematical reason for it happening. The main thing being illustrated by Nash in the scene is a common Game Theory model known as Prisoner's Dilemma, which essentially states that two competitors' greed - and incentive to not lose - dooms them to fail in their pursuit. It's not about the blonde being ignored so much as it is about the group of men working together to not step on one-another's toes.
- Played straight in The Love of Siam. Ying is an attractive girl. However, no one in the movie ever compliments or even asked her out. Ying's friends who are arguably less attractive than her even pokes fun of her for being single.
- The basic premise of She's Out of My League. Not a pure example, in that the beautiful woman does get hit on all the time, and she does ask the male lead out. But their relationship remains difficult because he's chronically insecure about dating a woman who's so much better looking than himself.
Literature
- Discworld: The specific version where the woman ends up dating the only guy who's too self-deluded to react that way is known as "jerk syndrome".
- Juliet in Unseen Academicals. She eventually pairs up with Trevor and becomes a model.
- Tawneee in Thud!. Angua and Sally also delicately introduce Tawneee to the idea that she's "settling" for Nobby, a chronic petty thief and watchman who smokes constantly, doesn't bathe, is occasionally mistaken for a monkey, and carries papers from the ruler of the city stating that, after consulting with Nobby's doctor and midwife, he's concluded that the balance of probability is that he's a human being (although for all that, he's actually not such a bad guy with significant Hidden Depths). Tawneee, however, is a highly successful stripper so stupidly attractive she causes all the men in a pub to start a fight about which one of them she smiled at... so everyone thinks she'll reject them, and so the only people brave enough to actually ask are the sort of pathetic losers who expect rejection anyway and so don't fear it- and if there's anyone who doesn't care about getting rejected, it's Nobby. In the end, Nobby breaks up with her because of her lack of kitchen skills.
- Lady Hish Tulla, from the Kharkanas Trilogy, is subjected to this both at court in general — thus preferring to remain at home at Tulla Hold unless summoned to court — and from men she's actually been together with before, namely Anomander Rake and Silchas Ruin. Although by the beginning of the story she's so used to it she fears any change in that dynamic.
- Lena from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is said by many different characters to be strikingly pretty, but to the point that people are intimidated by her. Her aloof and quiet personality makes this difficult, as well.
- Ayla and Jondalar do this to each other during The Valley of Horses. Less because of beauty and more because of assumptions that had nothing to do with beauty. Jondalar assumes that, because of Ayla's isolation and silence, she's a shaman on a quest to commune with the Earth Mother; Ayla doesn't realise that the feelings she has for Jondalar are sexual. When she finally does realise it, she tries everything she can to get him to sleep with her, but Jondalar, under the impression that it would be improper, doesn't make a move. It's more mutual misunderstandings that come from being from different cultures that separates them, not their good looks.
- Lan Wangji from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi is considered one of, if not the greatest example of cultivator, great in ancestry, looks, knowledge and abilities… and precisely those qualities make him highly unapproachable by his peers and even his seniors and juniors. His aloof personality doesn't help matters either. He ends with Wei Wuxian because he's literally the first non blood-related person that treated him like an actual human being instead of the powerful, morally upstanding Second Jade of Gusu.
Live Action TV
- It's the main reason Lindsey Bluth can't get any on Arrested Development.
- Played for Laughs on Corner Gas, where Brent is described this way by all of the Dog River women. This baffles the Toronto-born Lacey, who eventually comes to the conclusion that all of the other men in Dog River are so undesirable that "overweight, bald gas station owner" is essentially an Adonis when stacked up against them. The Dog River women just think she's lying to herself to feel better about not being able to have Brent.
- Olivia Benson in the early seasons of Law & Order: SVU had this problem. She is seen as a beautiful cop by most men, both on and off the force, but they rarely approached her, because of this trope, combined with her strong sense of getting justice for women victims. This made many men believed she either didn't like men, or was a lesbian, which she was questioned about more than once on the show. Eventually, she does start to date different men, most of them being in some part of law enforcement, and her first steady on-again, off-again relationship over the years with an officer she worked with named Cassidy, was successful because he wasn't intimidated and had the courage to ask her out.
- Discussed in Scrubs, when J.D. asked the gift shop person if this applied to her, and then she said no.
- Mentioned in Two and a Half Men: Jake is going to a school dance and asks Charlie for advice. Charlie tells him to go straight up to the prettiest girl in the room and ask her to dance, because all of the other guys will be afraid to talk to her.
- In one episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, all of the Sweathogs except Vinnie Barbarino, the ladies' man, are asked out to the dance.
- Mulder and Scully in The X-Files are insanely attractive, but they rarely date anyone or pursue romantic relationships. He's an obsessive loner of conspiracy nut in a career black hole. In one episode, a rather unattractive man steals Mulder's identity, and later tells him he's wasting his life, and that he's a handsome man with a great job and shouldn't be alone. Scully is occasionally shown as a Dude Magnet, but she's often oblivious or not interested, or the guy in question might be the supernatural monster they try to catch.
- Blue Water High: In one episode, Matt is afraid to ask Perri to the dance, because she's the pretty glamour queen and he assumes she has already been invited by many boys. His friends also tease him because he has no chance with her. It turns out at the end that no one asked her to the dance for the same reason.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Invoked in "Soul Train" when Hilary complains about being the only one without a date ("I'm a beautiful celebrity and men are intimidated by me").
- Played for Laughs in the Saved by the Bell episode "Rockumemtary". At an awards show afterparty for their band Zack Attack, Kelly is nervously asked to go sailing with a guy (who's so nervous, that he can't even make eye contact with her). Although she agrees, he gets it into her head that she rejected him, citing how he "should not have asked out someone so beautiful" and believes that she only "pities" him when she insists. After he departs, she confusedly asks, "What happened here?"
Manhwa
- In Cynical Orange, the beautiful protagonist embodies this trope. The girls hate her and spread nasty rumours about her and only the delinquents actually ask her out. She does not have any friends until she meets her Love Interest.
Music
- Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby" might as well be the theme song to this trope, as the subject of the song is a woman so beautiful that "all the guys on the corner stand back and let her walk on by," too intimidated to make a move.
- The narrator of Flight Facilities' "Crave You" implies that being desired by many people (but not the guy she likes) makes her lovesickness even more painful.
Why can't you want me like the other boys do?
They stare at me while I stare at you
Mythology
- Psyche from Classical Mythology thought she was an example of this trope, but the real reason for her loneliness was because she was so beautiful that the goddess of love and beauty herself kept her from finding a respectable husband out of spite.
Video Games
- Mentioned in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, during one of the repressed memories. Ezio's older brother tells him men are afraid of attractive women, and thus the first person to actually talk to them has the advantage.
- Rin Tohsaka from Fate/stay night is the school idol and mutually 'off limits' to all the boys because she's so clearly out of their league. This really doesn't bother her much as it leaves her more time for her own studies and magus training.
- Doki Doki Literature Club!: Rather heavily implied to be Monika's problem. She's beautiful, nice, and a great poet, so the main character doesn't even consider her a romance options despite her attempts to be approachable and encourage him to lighten up around her. And Monika knows that she's a non-romanceable character, and most of the game's horror is caused by her desperate attempt to subvert this trope by forcing the player to romance her.
- Happens in The Longest Journey when one Alatien woman is apparently very attractive among her kind, and despite her crush on an Alatien warrior, she is too shy to court him. Turns out that he's thought her out of his league all along, and hasn't even bothered asking her.
- Discussed in Persona 5 by Ann Takamaki. She's an attractive quarter-white girl in Japan who's a fashion model in her spare time, and her beauty gets her noticed, but by all the wrong people (like pervert teacher Kamoshida). Ann's only real friend at school is Shiho Suzui, who is Driven to Suicide by Kamoshida's abuse, though Shiho survives the attempt. Ann also goes through quite a bit of Slut-Shaming for how she looks, with lots of nasty rumors being spread about her. Joker and Ryuji do eventually befriend her, where she comments on how most people don't talk to her because they assume she's haughty or stuck-up, neither of which is true.
- In Planescape: Torment you can meet a Harmonium guard in the forum who has a nascent crush on one of the regulars, but has never dared approach her because he always sees her chatting and being social with other people and thinks this trope is in effect. She, on the other hand, is actually terribly lonely because she has a problem with being a Motor Mouth, which means that none of the people she talks to ever comes back to talk with her more. The Nameless One can, depending on inclination, either tell the guard this particular piece of info (which gives him the resolve to confess) or tell him that she's actually incredibly popular with men (which breaks his heart). As with many of the game's side quests, Fell makes a unique tattoo out of either resolution.
- Rival Schools: Kyoko, the school nurse at Justice High School, is both beautiful and very tall (for a Japanese woman; she's 5'8", a full six inches taller than the Japanese female average). These factors combine to make most men consider her unapproachable. When her coworker Hideo finally works up the courage to propose to her, she immediately accepts. It works out rather nicely.
Web Animation
- RWBY: Pyrrha Nikos is a tall, beautiful redhead and the star athlete of her generation. She's stunning, intelligent, talented, powerful and compassionate. Everyone is in awe of her and everyone thinks she's out of their league. She hates being put on a pedestal because it makes her feel isolated and incapable of forming friendships. One of the biggest reasons for why she falls for Jaune is because he has absolutely no idea who she is when he first meets her and therefore just treats her like she's an ordinary person. Through him, she is finally able to form real friendships for the first time in her life. Jaune doesn't realise this initially until the school dance, when he learns that no one asked her to be their date because they automatically assumed they weren't good enough for her and therefore didn't even bother trying.
Pyrrha: I have been blessed with amazing talents and opportunities. I am constantly surrounded by love and praise... but when you're put on a pedestal like that for so long, you become separated from the people who put you there in the first place. People assume I'm too good for them, that I'm on a level they simply can't attain. It's become impossible to form any kind of meaningful relationship.
- At first, Jaune didn't believe Pyrrha when she told him this was going to happen, and he said that if no one asked her out, he'd wear a dress. When it turned out she was right, he did. Jaune also spent much of the Beacon arc being Oblivious to Love and crushing on Weiss, who was crushing on Neptune, only starting to reciprocate Pyrrha's feelings shortly before she died.
Webcomics
- A variation in Ménage à 3, where Didi's problem isn't a lack of dates, it's the lack of non-Speed Sex (all the men she dates end up lasting less than a minute on seeing her naked). Thus when she meets people able to last long enough, she falls headlong into Sex Equals Love, which causes its own share of problems.
- Pretty much the whole joke of this Oglaf strip. As part of a running gag with a wishing doll that subverts wishes, the woman in this comic finds herself unable to sleep with anyone, despite literally begging for such attention.
- Done to each other in this Questionable Content strip.
- Shotgun Shuffle: Quinn is surprised to learn that her new roommate Ellie actually doesn't have a lot of dating experience, a she is a Blonde Bombshell who allegedly stole Quinn's boyfriend in High School, but Ellie's spectacular looks intimidate most guys, and it was her less spectacular (and less inhibited) sister who stole Quinn's boyfriend.
- This Subnormality strip, especially in the first panel. The girl in the first panel is actually a recurring character whose whole persona is this. She is an extremely attractive girl who is interested in a variety of traditionally geeky stuff, like comics and video games. This in turn causes an extreme version of this trope, to the point where one guy she talks to spontaneously aborts himself from reality because the concept of a girl that attractive liking nerdy things and showing interest in him is apparently so alien to him that he can no longer sustain his form in our universe.
- This xkcd comic.
Web Original
Western Animation
- On Adventure Time, Blargatha creates a fake husband so that she can challenge her sister Slime Princess to the throne. Slime Princess is shocked, since Blargatha is "so hot," while Blargatha explains that her hotness keeps men away and is actually "like a prison." Of course, the two sisters are basically identical and look like this.
- The prom episode of Generator Rex makes a mention or two of how "hot girls don't get asked out." Rex is skeptical until the beautiful Dr. Holiday confesses no one ever asked her to prom.
Real Life
- He's hardly ugly himself, but Andy Lee of Hamish and Andy managed to snare a date (and later the heart) of Megan Gale, a real life Wonder Woman clone renowned for being one of the most beautiful women in the world (and dating Italian male models) by, in her own words, "being the only boy brave enough to ask me out." Aaaaaaaawwwwww. Curse you, Andy Lee.
- Emma Watson took a big hit from the British Newspapers for complaining about this in an interview.
