Beauty Is Bad/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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This Trope: The most attractive people in a show's cast are extremely bitchy and make the lives of the uglier people a living hell.

  • Played straight: Kimiko, the high school's star cheerleader, beauty queen, Miss America candidate, and most popular girl, is extremely mean to the school's Star Trek fanclub for no apparent reason.
  • Exaggerated: Kimiko is a Knife Nut and slits a nerd's throat at the slightest provocation.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: See Beauty Equals Goodness.
  • Subverted: See the first entry for Justified...
  • Double Subverted: ...but then the fanclub smartens up, reports the extremist guy to the police, and Kimiko is STILL a bitch to them.
  • Parodied: Kimiko joins the cheerleading squad JUST to see how much damage she can cause to the reputations of "lesser" people.
  • Deconstructed: See any anti-"fat acceptance movement" rant. The main article, under "Real Life", links to a couple of Encyclopedia Dramatica articles that'll point you in the right direction.
  • Reconstructed: Kimiko and the aforementioned Star Trek fanclub make a truce.
  • Zig Zagged: Kimiko is on her period.
  • Averted: Both the Star Trek club and the cheerleading squad have a healthy mix of beautiful and ugly people.
  • Enforced: See Ugly Betty. That show also enforces a bunch of related tropes.
  • Lampshaded: Star Trek Fanclub guy: "Why do you pick on us so much!?!" Kimiko: "Because I'm, like, a cheerleader! It's my job!"
  • Invoked: "Those Star Trek guys are, like, SO pissing me off. I'll go totally harass them!"
  • Defied: Invoking the inversion.
  • Discussed: "I can't believe that Asian girl makes fun of us even though she might be One of Us."
  • Conversed: "Who's gonna pick on poor ol' Betty Suarez today?"

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