I get a lot of e-mail because of this job. One comment I get surprisingly often goes something like this:

"Geez, you're so ugly. And you're dumb."

About as often, I get mail that says, "Hey, you're cute. Are you married?"

For the record, I am married, and the picture that appears with this column is not one of my favorites. I was nine months pregnant when it was taken, and the only bright side for me is that it doesn't show how big my stomach got.

Even though I don't love it, it is what I look like, more or less. And I'm glad it's there, because it helps show people that there's a real person behind the words on the screen.

Still, it has been a huge surprise to get any mail at all on a topic so unrelated to anything I've written about. In real life, no stranger has ever walked up to me and said, "You're cute" or "You're so ugly, you're hurting my eyes." But I guess some people are thinking such things; otherwise they wouldn't send e-mail.

The whole thing has started me thinking about beauty.

Why do people care so much about looks? What makes some people like a face that others don't? Is there a universal standard of beauty? And if so, what is it? And how far will people go to achieve it?

What I'm finding is that it's a far more complicated topic, with a far richer history, than the latest Glamour magazine would have you believe. One thing's for certain: Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.