Looking good doesn't come cheap. In 2022, the average American spent more than $700 a year
on skin care alone. To look movie-star good, actors and models fork over hundreds or even thousands more on stylists, nutrition, personal trainers, makeup, and even plastic surgery.
But in Fictionland, important characters will almost always wind up striking and often good-looking without all of this effort and expense. Even destitute paupers and ragamuffins will look slightly scruffy at best and like they just walked out of a spa at worst. All it takes for them to be supermodels is a bath and a change of clothes. These people have Improbable Self-Maintenance.
There are plenty of reasons for this. For one, Hollywood Beauty Standards dictate that practically every important character involved in any live-action production is going to be beautiful or handsome because the actors are paid to be so. Unless the story needs a character to be ugly or malformed for the story, the actors will usually walk on stage looking their best for the cameras. Animated works are also easier to produce if you don't have to worry about new scars or stains on top of your drawing or standard model.
Another reason is escapism. Many consumers of fiction love to get lost in a story and imagine themselves running alongside the protagonists if not acting as one of the protagonists themselves. Describing your plucky group of heroes as good-looking regardless of their circumstances aids in that escapism, especially for romantic stories.
Lastly, appearances are often tied to goodness in fiction. Looking good is often a visual shorthand for moral character, so having your well-meaning heroes looking pretty to contrast them against their gonk or hideous antagonists is a quick way to let the audience know who they should be rooting for.
Note that characters who try desperately to maintain their appearance even in trying times are not this trope. This trope refers to characters who aren't nearly as unkempt as they logically should be in their circumstances.
A Super-Trope to Eternally Pearly-White Teeth, Nubile Savage, Perma-Shave, Perma-Stubble, and Wakeup Makeup. Compare Dirt Forcefield and Bullet-Proof Fashion Plate, when characters miraculously walk out of filthy conditions with nary a mote of dust on them, Cosy Catastrophe, when the characters are able to remain relaxed and comfortable in the midst of the end of the world, Ragnarök Proofing, when infrastructure and technology remain fully functional even after withstanding apocalyptic events, and Hollywood Homely, when a character is described in-universe as being uglier than they are out of universe. See also Hollywood Healing, when characters seem to recover from all manner of harm with little to no disfigurement or scarring, No Periods, Period, when female characters never suffer through periods, and Beauty Is Never Tarnished, when female characters rarely suffer the same disfiguring injuries as men.
Examples:
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Downplayed with Momoha. She’s a homeless hedonist who lives in a tent at the school where she teaches. Despite subsisting almost entirely on booze and surplus vegetables from the gardening club, she’s quite well-endowed and beautiful. Though it’s mentioned that the school chairwoman lets Momoha use the school’s facilities as she likes, so it’s easy for her to maintain her looks.
- Girls' Last Tour: Yuuri and Chito have no issue with keeping their clothes clean and neat (apart in one single chapter) nor keeping themselves clean, even in the midst of a post-apocalyptic ruined metropolis.
- In Aladdin, the titular hero is a vagrant who regularly has to steal food from local merchants to get by. Despite this (and giving away some of that food to even more helpless orphans), Aladdin isn't malnourished or dirty as one would expect from his living situation. He doesn't have any burns from living under Agrabah's hot desert sun or any scars from run-ins with the local guard. Even when he wishes to become a prince, the only change in his appearance is his wardrobe, implying that he was already dashing enough to be a prince regardless.
- In Kung Fu Panda, Tai Lung has been kept completely immobilized by an acupuncture needle-laced harness for years at the bottom of a prison built solely to contain him within the heart of a mountain. Despite this, he remains as clean, muscular, and groomed as the day he was imprisoned and easily fights his way through a thousand soldiers once he's finally freed.
- In Oliver & Company, Oliver never winds up dirty for much longer than a few seconds for gags. His fur never clumps or becomes matted even after falling into wet concrete and being blasted with water from a fire hydrant while exploring the dirty streets of New York City.
- Wolfwalkers: Downplayed with Mebh and and her mother Moll; while their bare feet are completely covered in dirt and Mebh is implied to smell bad, they both have clean clothes and completely knot-free hair despite living in a cave, having no technology and staying away from human civilization in general. This may be explained by them using magic to keep a well-groomed appearance.
- In Alvin and The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Zoe has been shipwrecked on an island for nine years. But her skin is only slightly dirty, her hair is still permed, her clothes are spotless, and she lives in an elaborate tree house she apparently built herself despite her deteriorating mental health from her social isolation.
- In Titanic (1997), Jack Dawson is depicted as being well-groomed and clean-shaven, despite being a poor, third-class passenger riding the cramped lower decks of the Titanic where people were crammed in like cargo.
- The Hound of the Baskervilles: Watson notes that Holmes "had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street" despite spending weeks camping out in a prehistoric hut on the moor.
- Interesting Times: Three beautiful women find Rincewind stranded on an island and inform him that Only You Can Repopulate My Race, just before he gets teleported away. The Discworld narration notes that Amazonian women who live in the jungle should look considerably grimier and sweatier.
Three figures stepped into his line of vision. They were obviously female. They were abundantly female. They were not wearing a great deal of clothing and seemed to be altogether too fresh-from-the-haidressers for people who have just been paddling a large war canoe, but this is often the case with beautiful Amazonian warriors.
- Bad Girls: The inmates are usually immaculately groomed and glamorous, and most of them with very feminine hairstyles, and often wearing lots of jewelery. Most real-life documentaries about a women's prison would show a different picture: far more prisoners with shaven heads, faces riddled with the effects of drug use, and wearing jewelery sparingly, in case it is stolen.
- Honkai: Star Rail: The playable characters who live in Belobog's Underworld are often ludicrously well-kept for living in an underground mining town where even medical supplies can be scarce. While Sampo's case can be justified due to his access to the Overworld, the same cannot be said for others, with Seele having no trouble keeping her long, pale, skirt-tails spotless even with her frequent battles and Clara traversing the mines in bare feet and a white dress without signs of dirt or injury.
- League of Legends:
- Kai'Sa was claimed by the Void when she was a child and forced to fight for her life against the Eldritch Abominations that populate it, going so far as to broker a deal with a symbiote monster to satiate its Horror Hunger continuously lest she become its next meal. Despite this, she survives into adulthood with flawless skin, glossy hair, and a svelte physique.
- The Street Demons skins depict an alternate universe where the champions are artists who compete in an Urban Fantasy street art festival to create the boldest, best art possible. But despite them throwing paint around in their animations, not a single member of the Street Demons skin line has a single stain, smear, or smudge on their outfit. This is particularly noticeable for Brand and Mundo, who throw paint bombs and use broad fingerpainting strokes respectively.
- Persona 5: After her mother's death, Futaba became a shut-in. She spent nearly two years doing nothing but sleeping, going on her computer, and eating junk food and instant ramen. While she is visibly shorter than some of the other characters (she's also one to two years younger than the rest of the Phantom Thieves), she still just looks like a regular teenager with good hair and skin and no other imperfections.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: According to Akane Owari's backstory, she lived in a terrible environment and a poor neighborhood involving countless murder cases, to the extent that she became desensitized to it, and was used by perverse guys for their own ends. It got to the point that she took on her gymnast role just for the money. Despite this, she herself doesn't look too bad, having a well-endowed figure and a toned body; it's hard to tell that she lived that way at all.
- In Love Me To Death, Victor has been living on the run since he was a child as a necromancer born in San Guadario, a city whose religion encourages the people to turn in or murder any necromancers on sight. Despite having little to eat beyond what he can pilfer or find, Victor grew up to be a ripped, Tall, Dark, and Handsome Clueless Chick-Magnet, with "adorably Messy Hair", and a square-jawed face. He also doesn't have any scars to mar his flawless skin even after being doused with holy water repeatedly in his childhood despite it burning him like acid. The only evidence of him living on the streets is him (apparently) having a layer of grime on him that gets washed off when he has his first-ever hot bath. Lampshaded by Enrique, who calls Victor's physique impressive for someone who regularly has nothing to eat.
- A recurring talking point of TB Skyen is the critique that characters in video games, especially female characters, aren't prone to wearing scars, having anything other than a Heroic Build or an Impossible Hourglass Figure as Only One Female Mold, or having dirt on their faces even when they're supposedly adventurers or have gone through horrible things.
- Infinity Train: Tulip (and other passengers of the train) remains well-groomed despite being trapped adventuring through the Infinity Train for months. According to Word of God, showers and laundry exist in some of the train cars but were found off-screen.
