I find it hard to dismiss the idea that people's corrupted inner states might manifest in sinister comportment: teeth yellowing, wiry hairs erupting from nostrils and ears, a foetid odour emanating from the crotch. But there are perfectly lovely people who are a bit pasty, unkempt, perhaps prone to crotch-rot - no amount of the special powder seems to clear it up - and in fact that's just part of the normal condition of being a bit under the boot of life, some combination of old, skint, exhausted and so on. What may be true is that when we sense there's something a bit "off" about someone, we look less indulgently upon their blemishes - these start to carry metonymic significance, to symbolise what's otherwise hard to put into words.