The very young and the very old are sometimes targeted, but this is rare... Female rape victimisation and female sexual attractiveness peak at exactly the same age — the two graphs map onto each other almost perfectly… if 'rape is about power, not sex', why would rapists just happen to target the age group that also just happens to be the most sexually desirable to men?
—The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry
Rape is a crime that is abhorred across the world for many reasons. Besides the immense physical and psychological trauma it causes for the victim, it is seen as even more heinous when it targets those seen as especially innocent, pure, and vulnerable. Societies that prized virginity also considered rape toward virgins in particular to be egregious because it meant the victims were Defiled Forever.
As a result, an unspoken assumption has developed that rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are crimes that only target beautiful people, primarily young and attractive women. This unfortunately means that a would-be victim who falls outside of this preconception is deemed to be at less risk of victimization, or even worse, their claims of being victimized may fall on deaf ears. This can be for any number of reasons: their age, their height, their weight, their face, their voice, their personality, or any other factor that doesn't fit their society's definition of beauty.
This idea, needless to say, is loaded with unfortunate implications. It suggests that people who aren't beautiful are somehow "safe" from sexual assault, and may not be in need of security or protection. A beautiful sexual assault victim may be blamed and accused of tempting or provoking their attacker by showing off their beauty. Being a target for sexual assault may be treated as validation of the victim's beauty, or lack of victimization treated as evidence of ugliness. Beautiful people may envy ugly people for not being objects of lust, and ugly people may envy beautiful people for the attention they receive. It could also imply that the only way to be attracted to someone who isn't conventionally beautiful is to be a depraved pervert with a bizarre fetish. The idea of what constitutes "beauty" or "ugliness" in a work may also be skewed by Hollywood Beauty Standards too.
In real life, sexual assault survivors' trauma may manifest as internalized issues with their body image, such as eating disorders
, or otherwise dramatically changing their appearance. This is often driven by the desire to "de-sexualize" themselves and get rid of the features that they fear may have made them attractive to their attackers.
In cases where this trope is Played for Laughs as Black Comedy Rape, the usual punchline involves a rapist refusing a potential victim (along the lines of Even the Rats Won't Touch It). This often overlaps with Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?, where the rejcted character is outright offended that someone turned down an opportunity to assault them.
A subtrope of Appearance Angst and Good Victims, Bad Victims, and a sister trope to So Beautiful, It's a Curse. Compare and contrast Nature Adores a Virgin, Even Evil Has Standards, and Stalker with a Crush. For the assumption that victimhood is tied to femininity, see Double Standard Rape: Female on Male, All Abusers Are Male, and Females Are More Innocent. For interplays of beauty and victimhood that don't necessarily involve sex crimes, see Drop Dead Gorgeous and Damsel in Distress.
No Real Life Examples, Please! Furthermore, please only add examples where a character's appearance is explicitly mentioned in the context of sexual assault and harassment, rather than every instance of "this beautiful character has been raped" or "this ugly character has not been raped."
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Case Files of Jeweler Richard: Early on, Richard's appearance is implied to have caused him a lot of issues with sexual harassment, and he is always the victim of unwanted drooling and inappropriate stares. And indeed, in volume 7, a distant relative of his is introduced who has never been able to keep his hands off the beautiful Richard and seems to have no interest in trying, seeing Richard only as another beautiful object for him to own.
- Slayers:
- Played for Laughs in the English edition, where a troll is about to attack Lina Inverse, but changes its mind at the last second and attacks a pretty waitress instead. Gourry lampshades this when he says:
"I guess even a troll knows a cute girl when it sees it."
- Played straight in the Japanese edition when Lina's captured by a group of henchmen, one suggests raping her, but all the others refuse for one reason or another. One henchman, a werewolf, says he finds human women to be incredibly ugly.
- Played for Laughs in the English edition, where a troll is about to attack Lina Inverse, but changes its mind at the last second and attacks a pretty waitress instead. Gourry lampshades this when he says:
Fairy Tales
- In the Bengali folk tale The Evil Eye of Sani, the beautiful woman Chintamani is captured by boatmen. She sees the loss of her virginity as a Fate Worse than Death, so she prays to the goddess Lakshmi to make her too ugly for the men to take an interest in raping her.
Fan Works
- Zig-zagged in With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, as most of the rapists are motivated by things other than beauty, such as revenge, bigotry, religious fanaticism, or abuse of power. In one case, Anastasia and Drizella were assaulted because they weren't beautiful and their male classmates felt they should be punished for it, and the sheriff mocks Cleo for being too fat to appeal to him, which ruins her self-esteem as badly as the rape would and it's possible he knew that would happen. There are some stories where attractiveness was the main factor, but the survivors are not portrayed as deserving it since it was something they couldn't control. Philippe believes it was the reason for his repeated assaults and breaks his own nose and teeth with a hammer to prevent future ones, but the narrative doesn't condone this view, as the first incident happened when he was an infant. The trope is lampshaded in the introduction of the Gangreen Gang, and their story notes how Grubber is particularly ugly but their assailant Mr Sir just made him turn away and still assaulted him.
Film—Live-Action
- The Mexican: Discussed. Julia Roberts' character asks her kidnapper whether he plans to rape her, and he says "Not likely." When she asks whether it's because she's not attractive, he says she is attractive and explains to her that rape is about hate toward someone, not attraction.
- 25th Hour: Monty has his friends beat him up before going to prison so that he would look less attractive and reduce his chances of Prison Rape.
- The Book of Revelation: One of Daniel's rapists says he was picked as he's beautiful.
Jokes
- One Yo Momma joke touches on the subject and plays it for laughs:
Yo momma's so ugly, that when someone broke into her house, she yelled "Rape!" and the robbers yelled, "NO!"
Literature
- Cloud of Sparrows: Emily's reason for fleeing America for Japan hinges on this. She was raped by her stepfather and her neighbors' sons at 13, and she was ultimately blamed for it, since everyone assumes because of her beauty that she seduced them. She finds that she's rather ugly by Japanese beauty standards, and as a result desperately tries to stay there rather than return to America.
- Earth's Children: This trope comes up, and is ultimately inverted, in The Clan of the Cave Bear, when Broud begins raping Ayla. By Neanderthal standards, Cro-Magnon Ayla is regarded as ugly and strange-looking. Broud doesn't rape Ayla because he finds her attractive (quite the opposite) but because the idea of forcing her to submit to him and causing her pain and humiliation is highly appealing to him. As such, many people are confused and a bit disturbed by his sudden interest in Ayla, not because of the rapes (the Clan don't really understand the concept and believe women should submit sexually to any man who expresses interest), but because Broud has always made it clear he hates her and he has a beautiful mate he could be having sex with instead. Ayla herself is shocked the first time Broud demands she have sex with him because she knows she's seen as unattractive, and later figures out he's only doing it to assert power and control over her.
- Queen of the Tearling: After the protagonist is captured by a man who calls himself "the Fetch," she discovers someone stripped her of her clothes, bathed her, and dressed her in something else, and is understandably upset. The Fetch admits to it but swears he didn't do anything lewd to her because she's too plain for his tastes. She is hurt by the statement that she's plain and dwells on it for some time but never acknowledges the fact that the Fetch said he would rape any pretty woman who's in his grasp. She doesn't even realize this when she later frees a beautiful woman from imprisonment as a Sex Slave, who tells her that she need not be jealous because beauty is not always an advantage.
- Dr. Catherine Cordell, the title character in the first Rizzoli & Isles book The Surgeon is this, resulting in literal Plain Jane Rizzoli instantly disliking and resenting her despite the terrible ordeal she suffered as well as the fact that a copycat of the Serial Rapist who victimized her is now stalking her. Ironically, in a later book, even in the midst of her jealousy over another woman in a similar situation, Rizzoli has a sliver of sympathy for beautiful women, noting that it must be difficult to deal with the unwanted attention they receive.
"What would it be like to be so beautiful? To walk into a room and feel every man's eyes on you? Including gazes that you don't welcome?"
- In the Danielle Steel novel Kaleidoscope, one of the three heroines weeps over yet another unwanted sexual advance that she's fended off, wondering why nearly every man—and some women— she's met has tried to rape her. The novel explains that she simply doesn't understand that it's because of her beauty.
- Discussed in The Apothecary Diaries. Maomao, the protagonist, notes that the slums have many poor, desperate men who are eager to sexually assault girls, but the "ugly" ones will mostly be left alone. Maomao is able to avoid this because of her lack of curves and height, and because she deliberately makes up her face to be ugly by Li standards (i.e. freckles).
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory: In The Santa Simulation, Raj and Amy commiserate over feeling undesirable and unattractive, and Amy dejectedly mentions that she once passed out at a frat party and woke up with more clothes on, apparently feeling rejected because she wasn't assaulted while unconscious.
- Invoked in Series 3 of Broadchurch. Trish Winterman is violently raped and confides in this to Cath... who also found out that Trish was having an affair with Cath's husband. She cruelly asks Trish to her face who would ever want to rape her.
- One sketch in Dave Allen At Large depicts a group of Horny Vikings (in both senses of the word) raiding a village and chanting "Plunder and rape! Plunder and rape!" However, the only woman they find is an old crone, who's excited at the thought of getting raped. Cue the viking leader's horns going limp and marching past her, chanting "Plunder! Plunder!"
- Game of Thrones: While the assault part never happens, Daenerys is threaten with rape twice for being this exotic dragon queen. The leaders of the Second Sons threaten to turn her into their prostitute, and the dothraki that find her in season 6, threaten to gangbang Daenerys.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
- Zig-Zagged in "Charlie Got Molested." Mac is offended when he learns that Charlie and the McPoyle twins were molested by their Creepy Gym Coach, but he was "passed over," since he was way cuter than any of them as a child. He even goes as far as trying to seduce the coach as a way to validate himself. However, Mac does some research and learns that sexual abuse often has far more to do with power and vulnerability than the victim's attractiveness. The gang later finds out that the whole molestation story was a Blackmail scheme created by the McPoyles—not that anyone would have wanted to molest Charlie, who was rather deranged and off-putting as a child.note
- In "The Gang Buys a Boat," Dennis describes how he'll seduce women with his new boat, but his plan is just increasingly blatant Sexual Extortion. An old woman standing nearby looks on in horror, causing him to scoff and say "Don't you look at me like that. You certainly wouldn't be in any danger."
- Played for Laughs in a MADtv sketch. An obese woman named Cindy Delmont goes to her boss to complain about her coworker Brian's sexual harassment. The boss, who constantly cracks fat jokes at her expense, outright laughs at her claims and struggles to understand why Brian would find her attractive. When she produces a recording as evidence, the boss orders Brian to be fired—not for sexual harassment, but because being a Chubby Chaser means he must be "totally out of his fucking mind".
- In the TV movie "The Rape Of Richard Beck", the title character nastily comments "Why would anyone want to rape her?", referring to the elderly woman being interviewed by another cop. Of course, as a middle-aged man, Beck isn't exactly considered a typical rape victim himself. . .
- Vicious: A Crosses the Line Twice example from Violet, the Dirty Old Woman who's Freddie and Stuart's neighbor:
Violet: I'm so frightened of being raped!
Freddie: For god's sake, Violet, no one wants to rape you.
Violet: ...What an awful thing to say.
Music
- The song "Spiegel" by the German band Tic Tac Toe tells the story of three people in group therapy. The second, Michelle, says she was raped at 13 and struggles with the desire to disfigure herself so she wouldn't be beautiful—in contrast to the first one, who wishes she was beautiful.
Roleplay
- Survival of the Fittest: In v4, Charlene Norris's first thoughts upon realizing she is on SOTF is that "people like her, the popular girls with bodies to die for, were rape targets."
Video Games
- Icewind Dale 2: The flavor text for one magic sword gives the story of a group of beautiful women who were captured as Sex Slaves and prayed to a deity of vengeance for deliverance. They were granted the blade, which they first used to disfigure their faces in order to make themselves undesirable to their captors, then used it to kill those same captors.
Webcomics
- Discussed in the following exchange from Chugworth Academy:
Kiyoshi: I don't know what you're so worked up about...
Sally: Oh I don't know! Maybe because a couple of old men might have been molesting me in my sleep!
Kiyoshi: I doubt it.
Sally: You doubt it?! Hey! Are you saying that I'm too ugly for old men to want to abuse me?!
Kiyoshi: I'm just pretty sure they're gay... - Strong Female Protagonist: During a support group meeting for dynamorphics (an expy for Marvel-esque mutants), a woman whose power caused her skin to turn green shares how she feels sexually objectified at her job. Another dynamorph, whose power caused her whole skin to turn into a thick hide with metallic scales, complains about having to listen to a "green porn star bitch" and belittles her problems, pointing out that her own mutation severely limits her ability to function in society.
Web Videos
- A gag used in several of Brandon Rogers' videos:
- Neighborhood Patrol 2: Pedo Hunt: While giving a stranger danger presentation at the local children's hospital, Louis gets fed up with one particularly annoying kid and says, "You know what, everyone? This little boy can talk to as many strangers as he wants, because quite frankly, no rapist will want that in the back of his car."
- Hall Monitor Helen: Helen chastises a student's dress code by saying, "You know what happens to girls who wear shorts that short? A white van picks them up and they get all their holes resized... not you, Melissa, you're never getting molested."
Western Animation
- In the American Dad! episode "The Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls," Roger gets offended when a serial killer doesn't want to cut off his head and rape his body—the killer only targets attractive women, and Roger (who's disguised as a woman) takes it as an insult toward his costume design abilities.
Killer: Ya look like a fat, grey pear! I hate you, ya fat grey pear!
Roger: [gasps] Well, what are you into, flesh-colored, non-fruit-shaped women?! - Discussed and inverted in The Boondocks episode "A Date with the Booty Warrior." Uncle Ruckus, Tom, Huey, Riley, and a few other visitors have been taken hostage by several inmates during a Prison Riot. Ruckus makes a snarky comment that annoys his captors, which leads to one of them replying, "You ain't too fat and ugly to get raped, motherfucker!" Ruckus immediately apologizes in response.
- Family Guy: In "The Griffin Family History," a group of robbers break into the Griffins' home, and everyone but Meg makes it to the panic room in time. She expects the robbers to rape her, but they find her so ugly that they refuse. She's so desperate for their validation she starts sexually harassing the robbers.
- Robot Chicken: Played for Laughs. One sketch shows a Scooby-Doo-esque gang exploring an old mansion. The two guys are subsequently caught and raped by the "Rape Ghost." One ugly heavy girl is ignored by the ghost, which greatly upsets her.
