looks determining character

[hekatesheadband]

No: HPFGUIDX 139662

It seems to me that part of the issue is the tendency, probably
universal among humans, to remember the superficial negative traits of
people we dislike more emphatically than the superficial negative
traits of people we do like. JKR does a good job of making Harry's
perspective on this psychologically realistic. Readers tend to follow
this lead.

hickengruendler: <<But I think the problem, that many people have, is 
> not, that nearly every villain is ugly, it's that nearly every ugly 
> looking person is a villain. Snape... the Dursleys... the background
Slytherins and Death Eaters 
> all resemble trolls... Sirius' mother is a remarkably old and ugly
witch and I 
> won't even start about Umbridge... the only ugly 
> character, who is not evil, is Moaning Myrtle.>>

I think the Harry filter is coming into play here, but of course
there's always another layer. If I recall correctly, Moaning Myrtle is
described only as plain-looking. At the end of CoS, however, Dobby is
explicity described as ugly ("tears streamed down Dobby's ugly face,"
I believe). Similarly, Mrs Black is actually described as looking like
she's being tortured horribly - not likely to work wonders for
anyone's appearance, although admittedly the sallow skin and bloodshot
eyes don't help either. Sounds to me like a lifetime of drinking got
to her liver in the end.

hickengruendler: <<On the other hand, both Molly and 
> Neville, who seem to be a bit on the chubby side, are always 
> described very carefully. It are only the bad characters, like
Draco 
> or Pansy, who call them "fat"...>>

Very true. But I think the Harry filter is at least as much a factor
here as it is with the unpleasant characters. The Harry-Narrator voice
doesn't use words like "fat" to describe people he likes, another
stroke of realism: people in general are inclined to think of
overweight friends as "heavy-set" and overweight enemies as
"disgustingly fat," or the like.

Looking at it a little more carefully, though (i.e., picking through
things with a morbid obsession;), there are plenty of White Hats who
aren't exactly pretty. The prime example would be Mad-Eye Moody, who's
nothing short of hideous. ("His face looked like it had been carved
out of weathered wood by someone who had only the vaguest idea of what
human features were supposed to look like, and was none too skilled
with a chisel.") Madam Pince is likened to "an underfed vulture," and
reading between the lines, McGonagall's heavy jaw, stern expression
and really tight bun probably don't lend the impression of a beauty
queen. Slughorn, as mentioned elsewhere, is a bit grotesque, and Prof
Sprout is described as "dumpy."

So I suppose the overall impression, at least as it strikes me, is
that beautiful, ugly and in-between people are found in equal
proportions on all moral sides. It's just that Harry's memory and
perspective, like anyone's, tend to minimise his friends' bad traits
and maximise his enemies'.

-hekatesheadband
(because the Sorting Hat is really Bono)