In 1965 or thereabouts the R&B group "The Temptations" recorded the hit song "Beauty's Only Skin Deep". That title comes from a still widely used African American folk saying:

"Beauty's only skin deep but ugly is clean to the bone."

IMO, this African American secular slave folk rhyme is the origin of those sayings:

LOVE IS JUST A THING OF FANCY
Talley, "Negro Folk Rhymes", p. 2

Love is jes a thing o' fancy,
Beauty's jes a blossom;
If you wantrs to git yo' finger bit,
Stick it at a 'possum.

Beauty, it's jes skin deep;
Ugly, it;s to de bone.
Beauty, it'll jes fad 'way;
But Ugly'll hol' er own.

****

Here's two versions of a mid to late 1980s dance style cheerleader/foot stomping cheer that has the same 'dissin' theme:

U-G-L-Y
You ain't got no alibi
You ugly.
Yeah Yeah
you ugly.

M-O-MM-A
this is how you got that way
You're momma
Yeah Yeah
You're momma.

Source {"Wildcats" movie, 1986}

U-G-L-Y
You ain't got no alibi
You ugly.
What?! What?!
you ugly.

Source: Janelle Howard {African American female, Pittsburgh, Penn; ; memories of Pittsburgh in early late 1980s; collected by Azizi Powell, 9/2004; Janelle said that her school's cheerleaders had been saying this rhyme long before the movie "Wildcats". In that movie a "ghettofied" African American cheerleading troup chanted this rhyme to the other team's much more 'sedate' cheerleaders.





Ms. Azizi Powell