Basic Trope: A seemingly beautiful character is revealed to be hiding their actually ugly face using make-up or magic.
- Straight: Alice is a Cruel Cheerleader and the most popular girl in Trope High. When a sudden downpour interrupts the squad's practice and washes her make-up away, she is revealed to have bad skin, sunken eyes, and a pig-like nose.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a tall, slender and inhumanely beautiful model, but is actually using a full-body disguise to hide the fact that she's actually short, obese and has a Nightmare Face.
- Downplayed: Without make-up, Alice has heavy under eye bags and some age lines, although she's still fairly attractive regardless.
- Justified: Alice was bullied/mocked by her peers for being ugly, so she wears thick make-up to hide her defects and be treated normally.
- Inverted: Beautiful All Along
- Subverted: Alice screams and hides her face when her friends walk in on her without her make-up. But her barefaced look is actually more attractive than her usual style.
- Double Subverted: The girl in question is not actually Alice, but a luxury brand influencer who doesn't want to be seen in casual wear. When Alice walks out without her usual make-up on, she is hideous.
- Parodied:
- Alice's "beautiful face" is clearly a mask, and the warty skin of her original appearance is still visible underneath the plastic. People still gets fooled by her fake charms and expresses exaggerated shocks when she takes it off to eat/drink.
- Alice doesn't look that different without makeup on, but everyone else still acts as if she's misshapen and repulsive in appearance.
- "I'm five hundred pounds, I wear a magic corset" is what Alice always says, but it turns out she isn't sarcastic.
- Zigzagged: After Alice is revealed to be hideous without her makeup on, she invests in plastic surgery to improve her appearance. The result is botched, forcing her to continue the charade of using makeup to look prettier until she can afford to hire a better plastic surgeon.
- Averted: Alice isn't wearing make-up and is beautiful as-is.
- Enforced:
- Alice is an Alpha Bitch and the story wants her to reinforce Beauty Equals Goodness and/or subvert Beauty Is Bad by revealing that she's really as hideous outside as she is inside.
- Alternatively, the story wants to teach a True Beauty Is on the Inside aesop by having Alice's friends continue to love and support her even after she loses her mask because they are attracted by her personality, not her appearance.
- The creators want to teach An Aesop on the importance of knowing people better before pursuing relationships with them by having Alice reveal her true appearance to her suitor and the suitor leaving her out of disgust at how hideous she is without her makeup, making it clear that Alice should've made sure her suitor wasn't only interested because she looked pretty and that the suitor should've put her personality over her physical appearance.
- Lampshaded: "You wouldn't call me beautiful if you know what I really look like."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Alice's rivals takes pictures of her without her make-up and spread it around the school to destroy her reputation.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed:Bob: Ugh, why does Alice always take so long to put on her make-up?
Carol: Maybe she looks really ugly without it and has to put on a lot. - Conversed: "Whoa, I never realized that you can change your appearance so much with just a little make-up."
Back to Ugly All Along.
