Ballroom sequence: how ugly they are !

I can't understand why you would think the people in the ball were strikingly ugly. Perhaps you have been watching too many porn magazines. Most of them were normal looking. The young girls, jumping on beds and chatting, were pretty as young girls usually are.

He says that ugliness is the result of inbreeding, which is true.
The Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs is a good example of that: Charles II was not only a physical freak but also a half-retard as a result of a long tradition of marriages between first-cousins. He was declared unfit to rule and the French Bourbons replaced him. And that was the end of two hundred years of the glorious Hapsburg dynasty in Spain.

That's odd. I saw a mixture of average and pretty women.

I would hope that a seasoned viewer would not want to be at the ball because of the people's appearance but because of the decadence. That was the impression Visconti said he want the sequence to have. It's one of the most beautiful sequences in any film I've seen, but its opulence and waste are staggering.
It tells several stories. There's the contrast between the decadent excess within the villa and the dirt streets and poverty outside. Visconti is saying that this is why the society must change. That decadence includes the behavior of most of the young women, whom Don Fabrizio compares to monkeys. There's the building relationship between the undisciplined aristocrat, Tancredi and the ambitious and somewhat coarse Angelica, with cracks already beginning to show in their romance. Finally, there are Don Fabrizio's premonitions that he is near death. Not only he, but also his class, is dying. The sequence is masterful, capturing almost every aspect of the plot and characterizations, and I don't think the beauty or ugliness of the people has much to do with it.

Hmmmmmm, jealous perhaps? It's you...becuz by your avatar, you TRULY ARE UGLY!!