You can make beautiful static websites with almost no extra load. Just add a little CSS.

Using e.g. Hugo you can generate nice static websites from markdown that are compact but not ugly.

Look, I wouldn't want to live in a "beautiful" house that didn't have a bathroom. But your response also kind of demonstrates my point, which is that somewhere along the way we decided that beauty was the antithesis of usability. My suggestion is that they can coexist.