Fellow Writers, Please Explain

I see a lot of pretty people. Everywhere: in magazines, on the telly, on polyvore, in films. But I'm thinking. Pretty, when you really come down to it, means looking in a mirror and liking the PERSONALITY, the individual, un-copyable style reflected there. I've always silently hated it in books when all the characters are described as good looking (in different collections of words, but the message beams through). Why the hell does it matter what people look like? I'm certainly guilty of this in my own writing. This is partly why Charlotte Bronte is brilliant: In a time when beauty and status meant more than anything, she was writing Jane Eyre, removing looks from the equation, and focusing solely on the protagonist's MIND. She purposely repeats again and again that the two main characters (both of whom I liked very much) are "plain" and "ordinary", the man being hawk nosed and unattractive, and Jane having no sense of finery about her. And by golly, it all works out fine and they get their relatively fairytale ending. I would like to see more books with statistically probable main characters; average people, people like us. Writers try, they do, but apart from certain categories, modern writing is just....it's really hard to find normal people. And also, if the people are described as plain and simple, when book is turned into film, gorgeous actors and actresses are inevitably cast.