I still don't fully understand the concept of wabi sabi. It's usually explained as "perfectly imperfect" in the context of the beauty of struggle and austerity as seen through the lens of the Buddhist tradition. But as a Westerner, that doesn't really tell me much. I don't have the full cultural context for that to make sense. Like the terms bunjin or literati, I don't think wabi sabi has a clear definition that you can express in a few English words. It's more of an attitude than a concept. Or maybe it's as much an attitude as a concept? The closest thing we have to Buddhism is Western Stoicism as described by the Ancient Greeks and Romans, but that's still pretty different. The latter is rooted in formal Aristotelian logic, and the former is more about the oneness of everything, and those two traditions in logic directly conflict with each other. The Westerner would say, "A thing is either A or not A. It cannot be both." A Buddhist would likely find the formulation absurd.
I know a girl that I wouldn't touch with a stick because her ugliness might be contagious. Still, she gets paid 40K a day if she works and she's been on the cover of vogue a couple times.
And in all fairness, she has that 'something' that makes her different than all the rest of the mediocre European ladies. If you'd photoshop any part of her face onto another lady, it would improve their face. But all parts combined as a whole face on this single girl, it just doesn't work in real life. On photos, magazines, catwalks, whatever, it's magical..
Pick up a rock, any rock. Look at it for long enough and you'll find something that sticks out. Something that's good about it. If you focus on it long enough, even a brick can be a pretty brick. I think that's the idea of wabi sabi. It's not just the view, it's the emotional and mental investment that you make to look for something, which actually makes it better.
The mona lisa for example is what I'd consider an average southern European lady with an average expression. Yet for some reason people are captivated by her. Is it because they kept looking until they found something, or is it because she actually has something that feels familiar to all of us? It might just be the fact that it's so average, so common.
I don't have any answers either.