Long time ago it was trendy to exchange mails (paper mails, not e-mails). Later -- the e-mails, then the chats... whatever. The meaning is that I and many like had to know girls via mails, e-mails, chats, i. e. before we know how they look like (even today, there are cases when you're connecting with somebody but you never saw her before because she's not posting any photos or videos online). So, you got it, right? I am talking about the situation when you're chatting with a person for a certain period of time and exchange a lot of info but without knowing her looks and even never hearing her voice. Well, there were these cases when I liked very much the girl's personality, thinking, points of view, culture, education and so on. At that point I was thinking of her like "Such a great girl, surely she is pretty too!"
And what I imagined was something like 8/10 at least! When I saw some of these girls, I was very surprised that they're not more than 3/10 and some even 1/10 (sort of scary).
Well, later when my knowledge were upgraded I started to think "No matter how well she draws, how tender are her words and how clever she is, she may be an ugly one!" and still, when there was some really amazing one (draws romantic flowers and birds in her letters, speaking gently, her handwriting is pretty, no stupid words and meanings, poetic and so on), I was thinking: "This one, even ugly is the one for me!" At that point, "ugly" for me was not less than 4/10. Otherwise I really couldn't accept it. And, yes, there was a case when I girl like that was really around 4/10 and I was okay with it. But when there was some 2/10 or 1/10, OMG!... I wasn't able to continue to chat with her even a word because of all those disgust and/or fear that I felt.
I remember the time, when I already had many cases like these (to think and believe that the girl is at least not scary but she was too ugly and/or scary for my taste) and I said it to a friend who was in love with one like that. I told him that he should be careful and at least to ask her for a photograph before they meet. Well, the man was sure that "Even too ugly, I am going to love her." and do you know the result? He traveled many kilometers to meet her and after 8 hours when he saw her he said he had no energy to make even a step forward.
He said he was a fat, aunt-like type and no matter how lonely and needy he was that time (and how deeply in love he was towards her character and personality, and culture) he just wasn't psychologically able to go and at least to say "Hi!"... later we were thinking how he to apologize to her because it was really a bad thing to make a woman to wait for you and you never to show up.
So, here is the problem with the females too: they tend to imagine someone who is
at least 5/10 but when you (at her eyes) are some 2/10 or 3/10, of course, even she wants to be nice, she just can't move further.
So, it's not "Looks are everything." but also it's not "Looks doesn't matter." Remember that there is just a "Looks threshold" which is more or less individual, subjective but it exists.