Raised in the jungle by apes, Tarzan shares their standards of beauty - the only standards he has ever known. When he first sees himself reflected in a pool, he feels authentically inferior. Having a tiny slit of a mouth and puny white teeth, possessing a hideous bare hide, and of course being hairless, he wonders that the other apes can look at him at all. The question Tarzan asks himself, with shame and confusion, is, therefore : "Why don't I look like the other apes?"
after Marianna Torgovnick in Gone Primitive