Is there a word that describes things that are both ugly and beautiful at the same time? One might feel ambivalent when seeing such things, but that describes your response rather than the thing itself. Apparently the English language does not have a term for things that are simultaneously ugly and beautiful. The French would call such a thing ‘jolie laide’, a phrase that translates literally as ‘pretty-ugly’ and refers to a beauty that defies conventional standards. I’ll nominate the turkey vulture as a good example of jolie laide. Can you think of other things in nature that are ugly and beautiful simultaneously?