My personal view is this:
I don't and wouldn't call someone ugly, especially not in any malicious way. I have tastes and preferences like most males. I have an idea of what's attractive to me and what isn't and regardless of me being someone who really does appreciate the person, not the body, I still don't think that it means I should have to go and date someone I don't think is attractive.
I don't care if someone else thinks a girl I like is attractive, if I think they are, that's all that matters to me.
If you can sit there and truly say you have never seen a man or woman that has really turned you off physically, you're either blind or lying to be honest. Just because you have appreciation of good looks it doesn't make you superficial. It's when the appreciation of good looks overrides the person containing those looks. If a girl is super hot, I won't hang out with her if she's a moron or a *****. That's not someone I wanna be around.
For example, I have a friend who is 18 and weighs 21 stone (dunno what that is in pounds). I personally cannot imagine him being attractive to most females and to be honest he's a bit simple. However he isn't malicious or vindictive and for the most part he's really funny and friendly, so I hang around with him.
Beauty is a term used in relation to something visual. So it is partially to do with that. I know beautiful people who aren't necessarily pleasing to the eye, I know ******* girls who are sexy as hell and vice versa.
Is beauty skin deep? Not totally.
I think that the issue is confused alot. If a guy or girl doesn't date someone coz they don't find them attractive, I personally don't see anything HUGELY wrong with that. At all. If a guy or girl rejects a person due to status, creed, race or what not. I think that's when it gets into superficiality. At the end of it, we all have preferences and are entitled to settle for no less than our preferences if that's what we choose.
-AC