The clear way to refute this is that the in-game world never treats the female MC like she’s the ugly beast they designed her to be. That’s the problem with this modern trend in media. Historically the plain looking girls were allowed to be self conscious and even juxtaposed against “hot” chicks and it was always endearing because regular guys/people could relate to it. The current use of ugly chicks is always in a context where the world is either completely neutral to their ugliness or it’s a full on brow beating where the world pretends that she’s not though. You can’t claim sincere intent behind the ugly female character design unless the artist actually commits to it imo.