It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
– Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
Read The Velveteen Rabbit at the digital library of the University of Pennsylvania
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html