In a summer portrait painting class over the weekend, we had a striking female model who was the epitome of what the French call "jolie-laide" (not very well translated as beautiful-ugly) -- the kind of woman painters love because she had strong features put together in nothing like the fashion magazine cookie cutter. Also something in her carriage -- this is who I am, and if you don't like it, there is something wrong about you, not about me. I was reminded of things and places that no one would normally think of as conventionally beautiful, but which are "jolie-laide" -- bittersweet chocolate, Ravel's Trios, Velasquez' dwarfs and jesters, Helen Mirren, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Tom Waits' music. It is a category all its own, and I wondered if others had examples of their own, this subtle but powerful unorthodox beauty.