The Beautiful Elite

Sexier than you could ever hope to be.

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

Now that you know who you are, what do you want to be?
—The Beatles, "Baby You're A Rich Man"

The Beautiful Elite aren't just beautiful. Their whole life is beautiful. They are more fashionable than anyone else, more sophisticated and charming than anyone else, and are usually fabulously rich. Their clothes are all way too expensive for you to ever own. They almost always live in a Big Fancy House that is so clean and well organized they look like they are Living in a Furniture Store.

Most of the time they simply fell into this status. In many cases, they are of royal descent, of divine descent, or at least belonging to some sort of lesser nobility. If they weren't born to the upper crust, they have managed to become a part of it. More likely than not, they have been educated in elite private schools. The Beautiful Elite rarely have to work hard at anything. In many cases, they don't have to work at all, but if they do have a job, it will be just as glamorous as the rest of their lives.

And to make all of this worse, those who don't rub it in, are so gracious about it that one has to wonder whether their unparalleled humility isn't just one more way they're better than you.

Don't always count on Beauty Equals Goodness. Sometimes Beauty Is Bad, and they spend their time plotting to torment the poor, decent average folk like you and me.

To some degree, this tends to be Truth in Television. In most societies, wealth, success and attractiveness are highly correlated. The wealthy have much greater access to resources that improve their own appearance and the attractive have much greater access to material success, whether through marriage or career opportunities.

Expected in Bishoujo Series. See also Bishonen. Not to be confused with The Fair Folk, although they're often an Inhumanly Beautiful Race. Contrast Beauty Is Never Tarnished and Unkempt Beauty.

Examples of The Beautiful Elite include:

Too Good To Be True

Anime and Manga

  • Trinity Blood. Being Perpetually Broke has never looked so good, and it must feel great being a Church Militant wearing such elaborate and sexy garments -though Abel's robe gets torn off all the time, Tres is a bullet wall and Esther isn't immune to wounds either. The vampires are of course uncannily beautiful, being vampires and all, but so are almost all the human characters (see more in the evil part of the trope). Catherina has the complete dashing beauty + regal paraphernalia in addition to Princess Curls.
  • Cain Hargreaves from Count Cain is also a good example of this.
  • Most of Rumiko Takahashi's characters don't fit this trope. But there are some exceptions. Some of the beautiful people in her series are Kuno and Kodachi from Ranma ½.
  • Anyone in Ouran High School Host Club, which pokes great fun in the snooty, upper-crust societies in high schools.
  • Justified in Gundam Seed. You'd expect Designer Babies to be prettier than everyone else.
  • Lampshaded in Black Butler with the Phantomhive family. In fact, chapter 32 (which was entirely about the backstory of the Phantomhive family) is titled "Beautiful People." To quote Baron Kelvin:

"White porcelain skin like a bisque doll, beautiful hair, big eyes like diamonds, a youthful body. I will become something else. It doesn't matter if my ugly wife leaves me. I will be beautiful with a beautiful life. I will be suitable for him."

    • Pretty much every person in the series is beautiful, save for some of the males like Baron Kelvin, Georg von Siemens, Jumbo, Lord Arthur Randall, Azzurro Vanel, Fred Aberline, Damian, and Doctor.
  • Absolutely everyone, including insignificant characters, in Shattered Angels.
  • Most everything by CLAMP, especially in their detailed drawings. Specifically,
  • Exemplified in Star Driver. Every single character, not just the main characters, is beyond beautiful (even, nay, especially the men). There's a reason why the main character of the series is called the "Galactic Pretty Boy".
  • Good god, everyone from Alichino. Just look at this.
  • Most of the cast of Fruits Basket. Mostly applicable to the Sohma family however, who are all incredibly good-looking, rich, and mysterious (to the point at which one person asks if their good looks are a genetic trait). On the other hand, the good looks aren't always a good thing, as proven by Yuki (who is constantly either mistaken for a girl or forced into dressing like one for his lovesick fans).
    • It's justified with the Sohmas, since most of the Sohmas in the main cast are supernatural. Apparently being possessed by a Zodiac spirit makes you better-looking.
  • The entire Pandora Hearts cast.
    • Save Isla Yura.
  • Pet Shop of Horrors's Count D, as well as his whole family (given that they all look almost exactly like each other), and what a lot of the pets look like (at least to their owners and to Chris).
  • Nana is riddled with them.
  • Subverted in Yamada Taro Monogatari, in which the eponymous Yamada Tarou is so amazingly beautiful that everyone in his school believes that he has to also be rich, noble, and a candidate for princehood. Tarou, who has more practical concerns, uses Valentine's Day chocolate as 'emergency rations' for his six hungry siblings.
  • Sakura Gari, with Souma being the most standout case. However, it's obvious that his gorgeous looks are the cause of most of the problems in his life.
  • Vampire Knight: The vampires. Later, possible deconstructed with characters that, despite everything, still suffer and hide their pain under this.
  • Special A: Not only is the entire cast beautiful, but Special A is the most elite class in the already prestigious academy.
    • Lampshaded in episode 13, when someone comments, "Amazing. Which modeling group are they from?"
  • Cossette in Le Portrait de Petite Cossette.
  • Hitagi Senjougahara in Bakemonogatari.
  • Relena's family from Gundam Wing
  • Everyone in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru.
  • All main characters in Noblesse - especially the nonhuman characters who live with Rai. It gets very funny when one of the characters (a young, spoiled idol) visits school bringing her famous "handsome" boyfriend, only for a bunch of her friends to dismiss him as "average" and "not so good looking." She's pissed off, until she gets a glimpse of the people they've been hanging out with - M21 and especially Rai.
  • The vast majority of the signifcant cast in Hanasakeru Seishounen. They're all so regal that even when the situation is funny they stay in bishounen/bishojo mode! And then you have the occasional normal looking character (Gonk by comparision).
  • Infinite Stratos. All IS pilots have snazzy school uniforms, a 5 star hotel grade dormitories, pimping mecha suit, and of course, look very good.
  • Most regulars in the Prince of Tennis anime are this. Especially Atobe.
  • Virtually every named character in Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, especially when the story involves Alice. It fits classical Japanese notion that everything in the Gay Paree is beautiful.
  • The DearS of the series of the same name are a race of beautiful alien slaves who are practically perfect in every way.
  • The nobles in Reimei no Arcana.
  • Everyone in Skip Beat! especially Kyouko.
  • The ruling class of Elites of Ai no Kusabi are elite in every way because they are designed to be.
  • Just about everyone in Princess Princess, especially the titular "princesses".
  • Just about everyone in Zero no Tsukaima barring a few fat/old men.
  • The mangaka Chi-Ran never draws anyone in any other manner than a) very beautiful and b) very feminine, whether they're male or female, major or minor; they live in pretty surroundings too, whether mansions or nightclubs.
  • Sailor Moon: For all its Generic Cuteness, Costume Porn and Princesses, the manga and anime mostly avert this. No truly beautiful character is shown without serious flaws that spoil the image of elitist perfection, whether they're the good guys or the bad guys.
  • Rose of Versailles.
  • Anything in Shojo. It is also prevalent in Seinen where the main focus are Bishojo but to a lesser extent due to a few male characters and the overall atmosphere of the series.
  • Mariasama ga Miteru: This is largely the point of the novel, with Yumi as audience surrogate. Even the author states that it's like a fairy tale set in modern time.
  • Gokujou Drops: Komari lampshades it all the time, usually something along the lines of "it's different for beautiful girls". Except Sai, who is a slob.


Comic Books

  • This is one of the complaints that the Morlocks - a community of sewer-dwelling mutants - and especially their leader Callisto and flesh-shaper Masque had about the X-Men. The X-Men - self-appointed ambassadors of the mutant community - are almost all powerful and attractive (even the inhuman-looking ones wouldn't have much trouble getting a date) and live in a mansion (or they did when the Morlocks were around), while the Morlocks were all freakish (some due to the afore-mentioned flesh-shaper) outcasts who lived in a sewer, relatively few of which had impressive powers. They accuse the X-Men of being elitist snobs who have a "but not TOO mutant" policy toward new recruits.


Film


Literature

  • Noldor Elves in the JRR Tolkien's works. To err is human, but to really screw things up requires an Elf.
  • Most of the vampires in the Twilight series follow this trope, but especially the Cullens. All the Cullens are described as being impossibly beautiful with Edward being metaphorically referred to as a god. All of them have at least one Cool Car and several college degrees. They also possess extreme wealth from years of compound interest and knowing someone able to predict stock market trends. Ordinary High School Student Bella often despairs because she can't find anything that Edward is bad at. It's implicit that this is almost a side effect- when you finally meet an ordinary looking vampire, it's because in life, he was really, incredibly ugly.
  • Anne Rice. All of her vampires, but especially Louis, Armand and, of course, Lestat are gorgeous and rich. This whole trend is heavily subverted with Near Dark, where the vampires tend to be grimey, travel around in camper vans and almost definitely steal their clothes from the people they kill.
    • Of course most of the above were chosen as vampires mainly for their looks, and they had money because they stole it; Lestat turned Louis at least partially because he had good stable wealth, and needed a nice place to care for his elderly human father.
  • In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000 Gaunt's Ghosts novel Necropolis, the mere outside of the noble level in Vervunhive stuns the troopers escorting Gaunt. (Gaunt, fortunately, is made of sterner stuff; then, he's a Blue Blood himself.)
  • Inverted in the Australian school comedy Hating Alison Ashley by Robin Klein (later made into a play and film), where the beautiful and talented Alison is a genuinely nice person, but the 'ordinary' protagonist persists in believing she's a snob who's constantly showing off her superiority.
  • The Clique. The Pretty Committee, the titular Clique, are described with lavish prose down to their accessories and the brand names of their cell phones—and, mind you, these are seventh graders.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, House Tagaryen are described as being inhumanly beautiful (the silver hair and purple eyes probably help). They maintain their appearance through Brother-Sister Incest which left them Royally Screwed-Up.
  • The Clackers and assorted fashionistas in The Devil Wears Prada. Of course, this comes at the cost of being shallow and obsessed with fashion and dieting to the point of neurosis.
  • The Koryon [Korean] royal court in Bones of the Hill is described in such a manner - the Koreans are all incredibly good-looking and exotic, the gardens are gorgeous, and the wall hangings and decorations are spectacular. Of course, that scene is told from Chagatai's Point of View; since this is probably the first time Chagatai has been in a building other than a tent or fort, it's only natural for him to be awed.
  • Dick and Nicole Diver appear to be Beautiful People at the beginning of Tender Is the Night.
  • During the first few chapters of War and Peace, there are various beautiful ladies hanging around a beautiful people party, where all the other beautiful people notice them being beautiful even in relation to their beautiful-to-begin-with-selves, and in fact whatever they do must be accompanied by a beautiful description of how beautifully beautiful they are, and their beautiful dresses, and the beautiful way they do their graceful beautiful beauty walk, and overall their beautifully beautiful beauty, lest you for a second forget what these ladies' apparent defining characteristic is. And also, you're drunk.
  • Deconstructed in The Great Gatsby, a classic novel that starts off by showing all the glamor of the rich, then revealing the ugly truths behind why some of them are this way.
  • The good guys in Ayn Rand novels. Example: John Galt from Atlas Shrugged is a brilliant enough scientist to rewrite the laws of physics, a brilliant enough engineer to build a perpetual motion device using his discoveries, a brilliant enough philosopher and orator to Author Filibuster on Objectivism for HOURS, and a brilliant enough leader to get every industrialist on Earth to join a utopian society of his own creation. Also, he's incorruptible. And torture proof. And every word of his physical description is dripping with swooning adoration.
  • Kyle from Beastly. As Lindy says, "Ten out of ten shallow high school girls surveyed would agree you're perfect." He's also fabulously wealthy thanks to his father being a huge media reporter and can date any girl in his school. Deconstructed, however, as even before the witch Kendra tells Kyle that he's ugly on the inside where it matters most and curses him to become ugly on the outside too, it's implied that he's not really happy because his "perfect" life is a shallow one and his father doesn't give him any real attention or love.
  • In Death: Some of the characters, particularly the rich ones like Roarke, end up in this trope. Then there are characters who are average-looking, or just ugly-looking.


Live-Action TV

  • Lampshaded in, of all shows, Days of Our Lives. When some of the characters get back from an island adventure holiday, one of their parents remarks on how they can go a fortnight without proper shelter or showers and still look like they just got back from a spa.
    • And, in fact, most American Soap Operas, especially the Procter & Gamble-produced ones, are embodiments of this trope.
  • Friends is one of the most famous examples, where the supposedly middle-class friends have apartments that only the richest people in Manhattan could afford in real life, and everyone looks awfully good.
    • See also just about every other "young single people living in the city" sitcom of the last two decades.
  • In The Cosby Show, nobody wore the same outfit twice, everyone's hair was perfect when they woke up, and the parents were overachievers who could catch up on twenty tasks before breakfast. In fairness, the parents in question were a doctor and a lawyer, so money was probably not a problem, but they should have had a lot heavier demands on their time.
  • Many, many, many sitcoms on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel take place in a world where everyone is Living in a Furniture Store, everyone looks pretty except for (we're told) the resident Hollywood Homely, and everything is decorated in bold, gaudy primary colors. Drake and Josh and iCarly are just two examples... The worst offender being Zoey 101.
  • The BBC comedy series Beautiful People both supports and subverts this trope.
  • H₂O: Just Add Water, an Australian show about beautiful teenage girls who transform into mermaids, is a very bad offender of this trope. Everyone looks gorgeous whether they're drowning, dry or dripping wet.
  • Gilmore Girls Lorelai says of her family's lifestyle that "These people live in a universe where they feel entitled to get what they want, when they want it, and they don't care who's in their way..." They'll dress in gown and tux whenever they get the chance or talk about their boarding school experiences.
  • The Vampire Diaries which is set in the quaint town of Mystic Falls where there are like 2 or 3 ugly people that always stay at home. Seriously, it is very difficult to spot a less-than-good-looking extra in the show so we will not even talk about the main cast. Also, they seem to have endless time to spend in social gatherings, thematic parties, period balls and charity events with obviously huge budgets. All in all, a great place to live (except for the vampires, of course).
  • The Korean Series Boys Before Flowers has so much couture hanging off the hot pieces of cheese of F-4 that it sparked fashion lines for Korean teens.
  • Refreshingly subverted in Parks and Recreation, where a majority of the main cast and the extras look like actual regular people. Even Mark, the Casanova of the first and second season, is only slightly better than average-looking; the casting directors are pretty much committed to keeping the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana ("Fourth in obesity! We're coming for you, San Antonio!") as real as possible. In fact, when Chris and Ben arrive around the end of the second season it's a little jarring—Chris is played by Rob Lowe and Ben by Adam Scott, neither of whom would look out of place in a GQ spread—though then again they're from Indianapolis.
  • The Knights of the Round Table in Merlin, truly the most catwalk-ready team of knights ever to grace the television screen.
  • Everyone except the actual main characters working at Reynholm Industries in The IT Crowd. As near as anyone real or fictional can tell, Reynholm Industries is in the business of looking incredibly sexy and having lots of sex, and occasionally having a computer problem that IT needs to deal with.


Newspaper Comics

  • The Comics Curmudgeon website refers to the Judge Parker cast as "The Pretty People Posse" who, in spite of doing virtually nothing (even by realistic serial-strip standards), routinely get huge sums of money dropped into their lap.


Webcomics


Web Original

  • The Goodkinds of the Whateley Universe, particularly Phase's big sister Heather Goodkind who chose not to go into the family business and instead has 'worked' as a supermodel and a Hollywood actress. Apparently, Phase's mother Helen Hilton-Goodkind counts as well.


Video Games

  • The Castlevania series received a makeover with more beautiful characters for both heroes and villains, males and females, courtesy of character artist Ayami Kojima. Her art is associated with Team IGA's tites, which started with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
  • Xenoblade features Shulk, Fiora and Sharla, all of whom would be top models in the real world (specially if you see them in a swimsuit), and Melia is pure Fetish Fuel. On the other hand this game has much less characters like this than one would expect from a JRPG. Dunban for example, while still physically attractive, is within levels reachable by the average person, and Reyn would be unthinkable in most of the rest of Japanese fantasy media. The NPCs attractiveness varies a lot throughout the game, too.

Dream Worlds

Dream World Examples

  • Mount Olympus, with it's inhumanly-beautuiful behaviorally-chaotic inhabitants, is one of the prototypes for this trope. Which makes it Older Than Feudalism. There were some exceptions among the Olympians, however, such as Hephaestus, who was scorned for his ugliness.
  • Almost all cases of high elves and space elves, from Tolkien elves to the Minbari, will look like this. Taken to impressive levels in the Lord of the Rings movies, where elves apparently caused everything to move in slow motion and all looked like Australian and New Zealand models. Or they look like Brett McKenzie.

Art

  • The Zeerust World of Tomorrow from the 1930s-1950s, (Up to the early-60s The Jetsons) with shiny new Crystal Spires and Togas and not a speck of dirt anywhere—in some cases, not even on the ground (which is artificial).
  • Just look at any illustrated advertisement from The Fifties. Good God, we should be so lucky! Those ads had you believe that women wore the most glamourous makeup all the time, and that men had impeccable hair, dimples, and teeth - and, of course, everyone was always in a really good mood. Compare those with actual photographs from the 1950s, and you'll see the tremendous toll that an era when plastic surgery and physical fitness were still at a premium took on the appearance of certain people.

Live Action TV

  • Sex and the City takes place in a fantasy version of upper-class Manhattan that appeals to the materialism in everyone. The main characters have absurdly easy but nonetheless well-paying jobs that give them time to be beautiful, have wild love lives, and own more shoes than Imelda Marcos.
  • Dawson's Creek is a different sort of dream world: an absurdly picturesque town by the shining crystal lake. Everyone is not only too beautiful, but more romantic than anyone living, and everyone talks in a language that sounds more beautiful than standard English, but doesn't really count as English. Combined with the soundtrack, it really does feel like a televised dream. The better class of dream, obviously, not the kind with the scissor man chasing you or the bottomless moebius pits.
  • Beverly Hills Teens was a half spoof, half straight version of this.
  • Zoey101 may be the pinnacle of this trope. It takes place in a preppy boarding school that...actually, preppy doesn't begin to describe it. The indoor scenes are more like "rainbow technicolor fairy land." Multi-colored glass, rainbow knick-knacks, Rube Goldberg gadgets that run on nonsensoleum...and that's just the backgrounds. The characters all look perfect, including the pair of Hollywood Homely girls, even when they brush their teeth without a mirror (as demonstrated in one episode). Everything is so bright that wearing dark clothes on this show is a notable personality trait.
  • The middle school in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide looks like a cartoon come to life, with a dash of Two Decades Behind (in this case The Eighties) thrown in for good measure. Which makes sense, since the entire cast acts like the old Looney Tunes come to life.


Evil Versions

Anime and Manga

  • Siegfried's Contra Mundi team in the Trinity Blood manga. Perfect skins, stylish, expensive Nazi uniforms and haircuts, and ohmygod, he sparkles!. (Then Cain shows up naked and ruins the effect. Nice butt, though.)
  • Subverted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni. The Ushiromiya household is filthy rich, composed of good-looking people with astonishingly good fashion sense and... well, pretty. That is, until the murders start. The first incident of the series consists of 6 people locked in a shed with their faces almost completely gone. Beauty Is Never Tarnished, this is not. And one or more of them may be the culprit...
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena may be the peak of the evil version. Utena's school is literally a palace, complete with royal gardens, and the marble walls are draped in roses and ivy. Everyone is beautiful and has their closet packed with skeletons. It is, deliberately, a more extreme version of almost any portrayal of royal courts on television.
  • Just about every character in Gankutsuou is beautiful and either endured some trauma in their past or will in their present life.
  • Everyone in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru is impossibly good looking with some sort of Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Vampire Hunter D where most of the Nobles and Dhampyrs are inhumanly beautiful, but hide predatory instincts behind their suave demeanour. One of the novels mentions that even the most kind-hearted Noble can't spend more than three days in the presence of a human without succumbing to the desire to drink their blood.
  • Pegasus J. Crawford and Siegfried von Schroider of Yu-Gi-Oh! are both impossibly rich, intellectual and glamorous. Unfortunately, they're also very unhappy with their lives.
  • The Celestial Dragons in One Piece are people who have the blood of "the creators." Their beauty is in the Uncanny Valley category (but the series is 90% Gonk anyway so that's fairly normal), but are by far the biggest antagonists in the series. In fact, they are exempt from the law, so if they don't get what they want, they kill without a second thought, leading to one of the first Celestial Dragons seen to near-literally Shoot the Dog and then Kick the Dog. Not to mention the treatment of their numerous slaves. They ride them around, even if their bodies aren't suitable for that kind of pressure. If a slave escapes, they have an explosive collar around their neck that will kill them before they get too far.
  • Sailor Moon: The villains of the second season, the Black Moon clan, are all rather beautiful and seem to lead very dignified lifestyles. Special mention goes to Esmeraude, who is repeatedly seen in fancy clothes. The only one who does not abide by this lifestyle, is finally revealed as the Big Bad.


Film

  • The Stepford Wives takes place in a Town with a Dark Secret where the women and their houses look too good to be true...and are. Notable in that the people who run the town, the Men's Association, are the only things that are ugly.
  • Seconds depicts a elderly man who pays to literally be remade as one of the Beautiful People; in a nice touch, post-transformation he is played by Rock Hudson. It doesn't work out very well.
  • The highest-ranking members of society in In Time, are very good looking and rich. In the film, everybody stops aging physically at 25.


Music

  • "Beautiful Dirty Rich" by Lady Gaga seems to be about people of this nature. Many other examples from Lady Gaga have also appeared in her work, most notably "Paparazzi". The video takes place in a nice looking mansion, but during the Talky Bookend part Gaga is thrown off a balcony by her boyfriend. It Gets Worse from there on out, as there are repeated shots of models' corpses throughout the video, among other things, and at the end Gaga gets revenge on her boyfriend by poisoning his drink.
  • Marilyn Manson's Concept Album Antichrist Superstar features a race of beautiful, superior beings who lord over the oppressed masses. The story is told from the perspective of "Wormboy", a downtrodden Muggle who seeks to join the ranks of these Ubermenschian overlords and become the titular Antichrist Superstar. There's actually a song on the album entitled "The Beautiful People".
  • David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things" tells the story of a perfect next generation, homo superior, who will discard and destroy the current population of humanity.


Literature

  • Brave New World is one of the most famous examples. A Dystopia where everyone is raised to be a Stepford Smiler, and everyone looks twenty years old (except the Epsilons, the lowest caste; they are barely human).
  • In Scott Westerfeld's book Pretties everyone gets turned phenomenally beautiful at age sixteen, but given brain lesions, so that they're all the same and follow the herd.
  • In William King's Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf novel Wolfblade, the House of Belisarius is like this. They even provide this kind of luxury for the Wolfblades, their Space Wolf bodyguards. The factional fighting is something else again, as well.
  • In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, the White Court.
    • Averted with Inari Raith, Thomas' little sister. Cute, but not blinding, jaw-droppingly beautiful like Lara, although that's only because she is still human. It is shown in the same book that teenaged Thomas was, while not ugly, slightly overweight and had a "squint that suggested a need for glasses." So becoming a White Court vampire literally makes you one of the beautiful people.
  • Treacherous Beautiful People often figure in the novels of Sidney Sheldon, dating back to his breakthrough hit The Other Side of Midnight and villainess Noelle Page, a poor French girl who clawed her way to the top by utilizing her beauty. Good Beautiful People exist too, but usually are the targets of the bad ones.
  • Terry Pratchett's novel Lords and Ladies features the exceptionally beautiful Fair Folk who are described as evil, violent sociopaths. They get away with it because they are so beautiful that people don't think they're good enough to stop them.
    • The beauty turns out just to be a glamour field though - to anyone that can see through it, they look vaguely feline and not especially attractive at all.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Iron Shadows in the Moon", the Physical God in Olivia's dream. This might go under "Too Good to be True" since all we see him do is avenge his son's torture and death. Then, it's a nasty revenge that endangers anyone who happens on it.
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray


Live-Action TV

  • Almost any portrayal of royal courts on television. In the polar opposite of The Dung Ages, royal courts from ancient Rome to the Tudors to Louis XIV are often portrayed as places where everyone is a scheming courtier in Gorgeous Period Dress who has everything—looks, brains, charm—except a soul. This requires completely ignoring the uglier parts of historical court life. For instance, Louis XIV's Versailles was beautiful, but it was incredibly uncomfortable and unhygienic. (Courtiers sometimes used the stairwells as lavatories.)
  • The Twilight Zone episode, "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", may have been inspired by Brave New World. (It was based on a Charles Beaumont story.) The future Dystopia in which the story is set forces its people to undergo an operation that makes them beautiful and ditzy. (Said people are only allowed to choose from a small number of idealized forms for their new bodies - which is why except for the main character until she goes through the operation at the end all the roles in the episode are played by only three people - and thus have to wear nametags in order to identify each other.)
  • The tv movie "The Girl Most Likely To..." is about a smart, homely, overweight girl who enters college and is routinely tormented by the beautiful people. Driven to the brink, she ends up in a major car crash. After months of hospitalization with her jaw wired shut and extensive reconstructive surgery, she emerges slim and beautiful. Returning to college unrecognized, she gets close to her tormentors who regard her as one of them—close enough to kill them off one by one.


Tabletop Games

  • High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy.
  • The Bretonnian Knights in Warhammer Fantasy. They are brave, noble, courageous killing machines living off the sweat of the peasants bearing 90% taxes on them.
  • Subverted with one of their Bloodlines, the Carnival - an entire bloodline of sideshow freaks. Imagine having the hungers and desires of someone who could trade entirely on their looks, but looking like you just crawled out of an auto wreck.
  • The Fairest from Changeling: The Lost; the name of the group literally derives from Fairest of Them All, and they pretty much embody The Beautiful Elite - complete with its darker aspects. They were kept largely for either sex or decoration by the Gentry, and they get the ability to use magic to enhance their presence and their ability to manipulate and persuade, along with a Contract called Vainglory which at high levels simultaneously makes them inhumanly beautiful and utterly terrifying even if they weren't to start with (and many are). Meanwhile, they pay for it by having an extra hard time with their Clarity (simultaneous Karma Meter and Sanity Meter) because they and those around them tend to mistakenly believe that Beauty Equals Goodness even when they're subverting it like mad.
  • Genius: The Transgression: There are a group of people who are better, faster and stronger than any normal human has a right to be. They also look damn hot. They're genetically modified Nazi fanatics grown in vats. Avoid them.
  • The Excrucians of Nobilis are this trope incarnate. Achingly graceful in motion, soul-churningly beautiful in appearance, hauntingly melodic in speech... And out to unmake reality on such a fundamental level that even those who aim to merely destroy it must oppose them.
  • Many of the Exalted are like this, particularly ones old enough to reach a permanent Essence rating of 6 or higher (who can thus raise their Appearance stat to beyond-human levels). Abyssal Exalted, unless they are so horrifically ugly that their Appearance is permanently 0, actually have to become this as they grow stronger.
  • The Galateids of Promethean: The Created can only be created from the bodies of beautiful people. They exude charm and grace, and their innate power allows them to become masterful manipulators. And then you see what they really look like. Under the surface, they look like mannequins, statues... embalmed corpses. When the world gets too much, they snap and try to claim what they want regardless of who suffers. Part of what drives them to try to Become a Real Boy, even though it means aging and decay, is to stop living out the lie.


Video Games

  • The BB Corps in Metal Gear Solid 4 are a collection of four stunningly-beautiful women from all over the world, described as being 'drop-dead gorgeous' and some of the most beautiful women in the world (in a universe where everyone has Generic Sexiness). They also fall right into the Uncanny Valley due to being scanned into the game from real life actresses, and are really, really Ax Crazy.


Web Original

  • Orion's Arm: While genetic modifications can give pretty much anyone who chooses this status by modern standards, Clade Labela stands out as an extreme example since their mandatory scarcity make them all the more attractive.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.