Ugly is New (Old) Talented

From Incredibly, I Was Even Gayer at 21:

journal entry 

December 31, 1993
I just finished Ethan Frome and right now I've got so much energy I'm about to burst, I am breathless with excitement -  Zeena kept Mattie because why? I believe she knew about her and Ethan, so I think she simply felt that because of Ethan's face, she was no longer a threat. Maybe. Or maybe she just didn't know or care. But all of a sudden, she had strength. First she let her health confine him, then she let his own do it. What a great book.

Of course the point of that post back then was Jonathon Franzen pointing out, for some reason, that Edith Wharton was fugly:

Wharton did have one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn’t pretty

And now we see that George Eliot was no stone-cold fox either:

And what of Eliot’s alleged ugliness? Ever since there have been George Eliot biographies, there have been George Eliot biographers remarking upon her uncomely appearance. “It must be a terrible sorrow to be young and unattractive: to look in the mirror and see a sallow unhealthy face, with a yellowish skin, straight nose, and mouse-colored hair,” the twenty-four-year-old critic Anne Fremantle wrote in 1933. 

Ouch!  Why don't you say what you REALLY mean???! (I just made that up!!  #imamazing)

I have no idea what any of this means, but Ethan Frome is one of my favorite books of all time and Silas Marner has the best opening chapter ever, so. Is the deal that whenever we see an ugly girl we should give her a pad and pencil? "Start writing, redhead from Sex in the City!"?