The Uglies

In Scott Westerfeld’s novel Uglies, a world ruled by beauty finds their world shaken when a group of young uglies challenge the status quo. All Tally Youngblood has ever wanted is to be pretty; unfortunately for her, when her friend Shay runs away, Tally is the only one who can find Shay. If Tally does not locate and betray her friend, she must face the ultimate consequence: to never be pretty. Westerfeld incorporates personal appearance into Uglies in an attempt to force the reader into acknowledging how an impossible concept of perfection as well as an obsession with “fitting in” rules today’s society. In Uglies our generation has been replaced by a totalitarian government that brainwashes it citizens into only caring about beauty. The people in the cities go through five stages of life: littlie, ugly, new pretty, middle pretty, and late pretty. This is all there is to life; most civilians do not question this, and instead accept it to be a fact of the world. There are, of course, some that are not content with this life, Shay being one of them. In the middle of an argument with Tally she states, “…these two months are our last chance to do anything really cool. To be ourselves. Once we turn, it’s new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty. Then dead pretty.”(Westerfeld 48). Shay recognizes that her life has been predetermined, and she is not satisfied to coast along this path. This alludes to the fact that in present-day society, far too many people are obsessed with fitting in or being considered beautiful. Rather than do the things they actually want to do and are passionate about, they allow others to tell them what they should act like instead. People like Shay who know what they want and when they want it are rare, and they constantly face pressure to change the way they are. The infatuation with perfection is another topic Westerfeld covers. Throughout Part 1 of the book, whenever Shay tells Tally she likes something about herself or Tally, Tally