what you see is what you get

There are no hidden or unknown features, traits, characteristics, etc., beyond what is immediately apparent in a given person or thing. A: "Wow, that's pretty steep for a desktop PC. Are there any other add-ons or accessories that come with it?" B: "No, what you see is what you get." I try to live my life free of pretense, illusions, or exaggeration. With me, what you see is what you get.

The product you are looking at is exactly what you get if you buy it. It comes just like this. What you see is what you get. What you see is what you get. The ones in the box are just like this one.

What’s on the table or who’s present is all there is. This expression, often used humorously or ironically, may have originated in Australia, according to Eric Partridge. Possibly it alludes to what a salesperson explains to a customer (as in, “No, this model doesn’t have four-wheel drive—what you see is what you get”). It gained currency in the United States with The Flip Wilson Show in the early 1970s, in which the comedian dressed in women’s clothes as the character Geraldine and declared “What you see is what you get.” This writer used it on being introduced to her daughter’s future in-laws, who asked about other relatives in our family. Pointing to her husband and herself, she declared, “What you see is what you get.” The Australian novelist Jon Cleary used it in Dilemma (1999), “Yet there was no mystery to her, something else he always looked for in a woman . . . What you saw was what you got had never interested him as an attraction.”