It is in men's interest to place themselves where they can dole out the permission to exist to women based on various criteria. Most of the men who do this will place physical beauty as the prize to fight for because they have zero skin in that game. Obviously beauty has become an ideal you subscribe to, no something you ARE. So antagonizing women on their level of attractiveness (either with literary prose but more and more with language that is clearly intended to state how bonerific they are) accomplishes many things. The pursuit f beauty as it is regulated by the industry is incredibly time consuming and expensive. Drowning women in work for acceptance is a way to keep them behind in many ways. Also, groups where men are predominant will become closer by excluding others... i.e. women. At some point their sexism will be called out and they will HAVE TO accept women in their ranks. Then, pitting women against each other is a tactic to deflect attention from competence, intelligence and experience as a means to evaluate colleagues and employees. In the late 90s, a guy coined the term 'media elevation' which is the expectation of men that women should always look exactly like the models in magazines. The disconnect is that Heidi Montag had to get 10 plastic surgeries in a day to look like a photoshopped magazine cover of HERSELF! The paragraphs you cite say 'she was not aftermarket cosmetically beautiful' but then go on to describe women who embody so many aspects of what beauty truly is about. These paragraphs are nonsensical and makes the narrator seem like someone who has no idea what the fuck he/she is talking about. This is how I feel about everybody who makes value judgement about me or anybody else based solely on physicality. Beauty used to mean something, now it's just a measuring stick that leaves so much out of the picture... Just like the habit of measuring everything using money.