Ah! Beauty! The gift of the gods to their subjects, inspiration to literature, poetry and art of all forms and colors. Its canons may change from decade to decade,   but its essence remains the same, lifeblood of human creativity and  emotions. 

And ugliness? Well, ugliness deserves some attention, too: if it’s true that every force needs an opposite to exist, then  we can thank the ugly for the beautiful, in the end. And if we believe the great Umberto Eco, who dedicated an excellent book to the  philosophy and meaning of ugliness, there is a lot we can understand about humankind by looking at the way it deals with the visually unappealing.