Our Gemara on Amud Aleph tells us a halakha that if an Esrog is grown in a mold and shaped to appear like a different entity, and it is no longer shaped like an esrog, it is unfit.

Rav Moshe Avigdor Amiel 1882-1946) in his Derashos El Ami ( דרשות אל עמי שלש רגלים דיני אתרג ) sees a symbolic significance in this halacha. The most beautiful Esrog is the non-conventional lumpy one, not the perfectly smooth and round one. Furthermore, efforts to force it to fit into some pre-existing standard of beauty, can render it non-valid. 

This is a reminder that Jewish values and ideas about was is beautiful and what is perfect may not always be dictated by external expectations and standards. Judaism abhors the graven image, perhaps even extending to efforts to mold and shape a human.

There is a story in Ta’anis (20b) about a mistake that Rabbi Elazar made when he blurted out amazement upon seeing an unusually ugly person:

⁦He happened upon an exceedingly ugly person, who said to him: Greetings to you, my rabbi, but Rabbi Elazar did not return his greeting. Instead, Rabbi Elazar said to him: Worthless [reika] person, how ugly is that man. Are all the people of your city as ugly as you? The man said to him: I do not know, but you should go and say to the Craftsman Who made me: How ugly is the vessel you made. When Rabbi Elazar realized that he had sinned and insulted this man merely on account of his appearance, he descended from his donkey and prostrated himself before him, and he said to the man: I have sinned against you; forgive me. The man said to him: I will not forgive you until you go to the Craftsman Who made me and say: How ugly is the vessel you made.

It is hard for us who live in a visual and materialistic society to pay more than lip service to this idea.  People with different abilities and different appearances, often not particularly attractive or smart sounding, are nevertheless gifted with unknown and beautiful qualities endowed by their Creator. It also is challenging when we want the best for children, in fact when we are charged with the responsibility of molding our  children, to avoid crossing over the boundary from helping bring out their potential versus forcing them into a mold that they were never meant to fit.