The Meaning of a Person's Outer Appearance According to Jewish Thought

In the name of Hashem. 

Greetings and blessings, 

You asked a wise question, and the answer can go in many directions, because both beauty and ugliness have meaning. Why was beauty created? Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder: If we were used to living in a world where people had no prominent noses and ears, then we would think that the nose and ear are ugly and strange organs on a person's face. And there are no laws on this matter, because even a snake looks repulsive to most of us, despite the fact that it is very smooth and clean-looking. The real question is not why beauty was created, but rather why the Creator placed in human beings an aesthetic sense, meaning the ability to feel that objective things in nature are actually beautiful or ugly. There are several answers to this question. The main answer is for our benefit: we enjoy beauty, and the world can be very beautiful when one looks at it - beautiful people, beautiful food, beautiful skies, a beautiful sea, beautiful eyes, and even the shape of your hand and the joints of your fingers are very beautiful when you look at them closely. Through contemplating creation, we are able to enjoy the wonderful acts of Hashem, and to thank Him for them. Thus, the purpose of beauty is to enjoy and marvel at the divine creation, so that we will thank Him for it and recognize the Creator's good will and His love for us. To a certain extent, one can say that beauty stems from order, and the more orderly and symmetrical something is, the more beautiful it appears to us. Birds and pandas are beautiful because of the symmetrical colors on their bodies. It turns out, then, that the aesthetic sense given to human beings helps them distinguish between order and disorder in creation, and thus know how to marvel at the order and wisdom of the Creator in creation. Without our aesthetic sense, we would be limited in our ability to marvel at and discern the Creator's wisdom. 

The aesthetic sense also has other purposes, important in our private lives: it causes us to be more orderly, cleaner, and to maintain a dignified appearance, clean and organized homes, symmetrical construction in the streets and houses, and so on - which enables human beings to live more comfortably, because beauty is in fact order and symmetry that allow organization and efficiency. In a world without aesthetics, human beings might deteriorate into polluted lives, disorder, and filth that would lead to countless diseases and accidents. Our ability to enjoy beauty causes us to want to live more beautiful lives, and thus also cleaner and healthier lives. And there are additional purposes for this in morality: A beautiful person needs to overcome the temptation toward pride, arrogance, and ostentation. Every woman is meant to be beautiful for her husband, but her beauty is also meant to test her, to examine the level of her devotion to Hashem and His mitzvot, which demand modesty and dignity over display and licentiousness. A man is meant to enjoy his wife's beauty, and therefore women were given special beauty. A man is meant to be beautiful in his masculine way, thereby projecting self-confidence and beauty in the eyes of the woman. Our ability to enjoy beauty allows for healthy marriage and closeness between spouses. Why was ugliness created? The Torah answer is: because of human deeds. Since  the sin of Adam, the world descended from its original level and ugliness and death entered it, things that had not been in it before. One may say that ugliness stems directly from our evil deeds. When human beings behave with cruelty and hard-heartedness, the world also reflects this back to them, in the form of natural disasters, cruelty among animals, and the like. Hashem created the world like a mirror that reflects human deeds. When the redemption comes, בע"ה, soon, ugliness and physical defects in human beings will disappear, just as our evil inclination and our evil deeds will be uprooted. One may say that the existence of ugliness exists because of the existence of the evil inclination and our evil deeds. Kabbalah teaches that a person who is born ugly or with a defect is, in most cases, someone who in a previous incarnation was handsome and became proud of his outward beauty. If a person is created ugly, one must in no way mock him or blame him, because it is forbidden to judge a person until you reach his place, and doing so also violates the prohibition of lashon hara and embarrassing one's fellow publicly (and one who does so has no portion in the World to Come - and must do teshuvah). However, there is a direct connection between bad deeds and ugliness. Sick people or people with defects often also become ugly, and this suffering usually comes in order to atone for sins or states from previous incarnations. 

Ugliness can also be created for a person's benefit and not as punishment: it is a strange fact that ugly people (those who felt ugly or were ugly in childhood) become more successful people in adulthood, because they cannot rely on their beauty in order to succeed in life. Unattractive women tend to develop their inner selves and become better human beings. Unattractive or rejected men tend to become men of thought and contemplation who advance the world; by contrast, beautiful people can be drawn to the exact opposite and become hollow and boring people, foolish or hard-hearted, simply because they never felt that they had to develop their inner qualities in order to stand out and succeed. Of course, there is no black and white in subtle matters such as beauty, and there are many beautiful people who are righteous and wise, and ugly people who are foolish or evil. But one can understand why the test of beauty leads to emptiness, whereas the test of ugliness leads to inner development.

Kabbalah teaches us that every soul, before it descends to this world, is shown the traits it will merit in its life, and it says, "Yes, I agree." The souls know that this world is temporary, and that the entire purpose is the deeds. Therefore, a soul can agree to a hard life of poverty or ugliness, knowing that these will benefit its spiritual success in the long term. I imagine how many souls pleaded with Hashem to be born as ugly people just so that they would not grow up to be arrogant or licentious people. In this life we do not understand how one could want that, but from the divine perspective of the World to Come it is entirely understandable - beauty is pleasant and attractive, but it can also constitute a serious obstacle to spiritual success in life. I assume that Hashem created ugliness in the world not only to punish, but also to benefit and help certain people develop and bring benefit to themselves and to the world. Another philosophical answer explains that ugliness was created so that we would know how to appreciate beauty, because without ugliness we would not know how to give thanks for all the beauty we were privileged to have, since we would take everything for granted. Only because there are illnesses do we know how to appreciate our health, pray for health, and recognize its importance. 

However, it must be remembered that the true world of beauty is in the World to Come, and this world is only a means of attaining the World to Come. On this it is said in the Book of Proverbs: "Grace is false and beauty is vain; a woman who fears Hashem, she shall be praised." All the beauty we see in this world is as nothing compared to the divine beauty of the World to Come. We must remember that in this world we are only shells, bodies destined to age and die, whereas the soul is the true self - and its beauty is reflected only in its deeds. One who was a good person, his soul will be beautiful and radiant even if his face was ugly in this world. Therefore it is said that this world is a "world of falsehood," because all the beauty in it is only a shell and an illusion, only a "taste" of the true beauty of Hashem in the World to Come. 

Blessings, Daniel Bels