> nearly everyone can become very attractive if they take care of themselves, dress well, and lead a healthy lifestyle.

You're going to have to define very attractive. No amount of healthy lifestyle will make your breasts bigger. No amount of dressing well will make your face less ugly (short of putting a curtain in front of it).

There are hard limits to what you can do as an individual without surgery. Even with surgery, you still will run into a wall.

Yeah of course those things are out of control. My point is that the things you can control have a huge impact. Maybe you can never be a 10/10 because of some specific flaw, but you could likely be at least an 8. Also flaws tend to be seen more as quirks in more "attractive" people.

I am inclined to agree with you, but as a counterpoint consider that if you're an African-American woman, the cost of adhering to U.S.A beauty standards is high, several hundreds of dollars a month. This is not an exceptional but a considerable minority that can't become 'very attractive' without heavy expense, and can't easily lead a healthy lifestyle when they are priced out of everywhere but places that are food deserts.

That's a good point. I was considering this through the lens typical of me and my peers rather than that of overall "American" standards.

As a counterpoint, you have facial scarring, skin conditions, gross asymmetry, bad proportions, bad teeth, nerve damage from Bell's palsy or the like, pigmentation problems, and so on to more or less obliterate the "nearly everyone" bit.

I guess I should have been more specific, how about 95%+ of the population? I just more often than not hear this line of thinking from people who definitely could look better but choose not to put in the effort to do so. In general I do agree its a problem, but its one people have actual agency over.