If something has aesthetic merit, it is pleasing to behold.

Christina Ricci has aesthetic merit.

Sandra Bernhard, not so much.

This charming phrase together with its companion “redeeming social value” were used to judge literary works that had allegedly obscene content. If they were deemed to also possess “aesthetic merit” or “redeeming social value” then these may override the titillation demerit or obscenity of the literature. Two classic cases that came before the courts were D.H Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Vladimir Nabakov’s “Lolita”. They passed the test. By today’s standards both these books, available uncensored in your public library, are unremarkable. It is an observed fact that the paralyzing fear that grips people who worry that literature describing sensual encounters is mostly due to their concern that the lower classes may read the “smut” and become depraved as a result. Never mind the fact that the upper classes carry on their depravity in the privacy of their lavishly furnished drawing rooms, while the poor are usually too exhausted from over-work to even think of exotic acts.

aesthetic means how something looks and how cleanly it is…so merits for this would be how nice something looked or was set up.