I kinda don't really understand why people assume him to be considered really fugly. While it is true that the story establishes that the population prefer effeminate men/boys, it would be the similar to our world's take on the traditional standard of beauty. If we were to switch his gender for a moment to our perspective, our MC would not be some ugly gorilla woman, our MC would probably be closer to being an amazon beauty since MC would have physical traits that would be biologically considered desirable to females. In that case it would understandable for the princesses (read: horny teens) to want to get into his pants.