im gonna have to say i actually really like the asymmetry. i have a few theories as to why people were 'uglier' back then than what we are used to. the most obvious one is beauty standards set by modern world and media, but that one is just too obvious im not even gonna go over it. most of us can look away from those standards if we choose to
the next reasons could be poor healthcare, wars, extermination of certain groups of people, social status and superstition. picture an era where biases and prejudices are acceptable, possibly even valued as common sense. ugly old women are evil witches, ugly young women are lowborns and worth nothing and ugly men are up to no good and likely criminals etc. their lives dont matter. we have only just barely come to accept them a few decades ago, hitler did a good job reminding us why lynching certain groups as well as handicapped and mentally ill kind of felt immoral and probably isnt the proper way to deal with this. but in a medieval violent world where individual struggle is a foreign concept and poorly understood, judging people by appearance should have been normal and even encouraged and understood as a helpful instinct
i imagine in a lot of wars, where all men were killed on the losing side, pretty women were enslaved and ugly women and kids were slain. repeat this over and over, and "ugly" faces become rare and pretty faces dominate and get more and more admired... and familiar. you can choose to look at a pretty face and point out why its actually ugly, and do the opposite for ugly faces. you can look at a kittens or puppy's face and point out why its snout looks grotesque, or hairs ugly, or eyes strangely formed etc. its about familiarity, and unfamiliarity, not some universal idea of beauty. personally i dont like symmetry, i dont see a lot of it where i grew up and never grew accustomed to it. when i see americans for example, especially in their politics and news, to me they look like they have all undergone a lot of plastic surgery. that looks like its their beauty standard, but to me it looks untrustworthy and alien from what im used to. i can choose to change my view on that, but then i also need to accept plastic surgery which i dont want to for personal reasons. one of the reasons is that its unsettling that im not sure how americans really look then, because of their altered self-image. but i think for americans, they must look very familiar, cant see the reason why its a common practice otherwise
for people who had health issues ranging from mental disorders to skin conditions to physical handicaps, i can see they make an "ugly" appearance in the medieval world, where we can otherwise treat them or, should their condition not be treatable at all, shelter them from public eye today to spare them from potential ridicule, or just the idea of it. people with chronic illnesses just kind of had to get by as everyone else in the medieval world, there was no special care. i have a pretty ugly skin condition with many wounds that are prone to infection, but in modern society i have access to all knowledge and technology on how to keep it under control, and its easy for me to expand on this knowledge, even if its not an actual cure. if i lived in the medieval world, i would get ugly infections and have nasty wounds and swollen skin. i would be ugly as hell, but never life threatened. so by medieval standards, im supposed to carry on and get told to stop whining, which im still told now and then even today. i would be told that all my wounds are my own doing, and that im the reason my skin is wretched. that it must be something i am doing, or that i am not believing in god enough, or that i am making it up to escape responsibilities etc. prejudices still exist, that make us draw strange reasons to why people hurt themselves, that its a choice and therefore they deserve no respect. so its not impossible to imagine those prejudices cracking up completely during violent times, eliminating groups and types we dont appreciate, or dont happen to like appearance wise (or fail to understand unfamiliarity and appreciate it)
im not sure what this rant is leading up to. i guess im trying to say we outbred and destroyed variety in faces with violence throughout history, and that is why we cant stand looking at facial variety today no more. i think its depressing