FabSwingers.com forum: Jolie laide

By (user no longer on site) OP
3 weeks ago

Jolie laide, thoughts on this? Apparently it means ugly beautiful, in other words someone who is not looked upon as pretty or attractive in the normal accepted sense, but still regarded as attractive.

It apparently is French although it only appears now in the Oxford English dictionary.

The expression was in common use in France in the 1950s. In the film Gigi set in France in 1950s the expression was used to describe the young star Daniele Delorme. She had none of the typically pretty features of film stars of the time, and yet she had an extremely attractive face.

I think this applies to us all really in some way. For me I see a woman, who others might say she's plain, or certainly not pretty, but I can't keep my eyes of her.

I work with a girl just like this, she's fascinating to look at.

Comments and thoughts please.

By *umlover60Man
3 weeks ago

Cwmbran

Interesting turn of phrase. I guess, in my lifetime, someone who was not considered conventionally attractive, but I always thought of as beautiful, was Barbra Streisand

By *icecouple561Couple
Forum Mod
3 weeks ago

East Sussex

My opinion is that you find someone physically attractive or you don't. There's more to it than the arrangement of their features