To me, a bad rug is like a road accident. It's impossible not to look.
The last place I worked, our chief engineer had a toupe that looked like roadkill. It was hideous. After a couple years, he got a new one, which if anything was even more blindingly, fakely awful. I think he noticed my buddy and I staring at him. My friend had just dyed his hair from black to blonde, and the engineer said, "If you can change your hair, so can I." We'd always assumed he didn't know how bad his rug was, but I guess he actually did know. He worked outside a lot in SW Michigan (extreme heat and humidity in the summer, very cold in the winter) and his car didn't have air conditioning...I really don't know how he could stand it. He'd give his toupe a little tug to adjust it when he thought nobody was looking...I don't know why, but that always kind of creeped me out. I guess it was a reminder that real hair wouldn't move like that.