The Importance Of Beauty In 'Uglies' By Scott Westerfeld

Uglies, written by Scott Westerfeld is an eye-opening book about a perfect world which is set in the distant future where teenagers are distinguished to be either ‘Ugly’ or ‘Pretty’. After a global catastrophe in modern society, preconditioned standards are created for people to follow. Uglies and Pretties are set to live on different sides of the town being separated by a river, to show how their world values appearances. The story starts with a protagonist named Tally Youngblood, a fifteen-year-old girl waiting for her sixteenth birthday to receive a cosmetic surgery that she has been waiting for throughout her life. She awaits to transform into a Pretty so that she can conform to the societal standards of beauty and be included in New Pretty Town. However, a journey follows on where Tally realises the downsides to becoming a Pretty. The major argument the story explores is how society emphasises the importance of beauty and the idea about the importance of identity. I noticed how the Uglies “weren’t happy” and obsessed with their appearance due to society’s beauty standards. “Well, I want to be happy, and looking like a real person is the first step.” Westerfield explained how the characters believed that beauty is an essential feature. The fact that the ultimate goal of Uglies is to become pretty showed me how they constantly compared themselves to the Pretties, who were treated superiorly. From the story, I came to realise that Uglies like Tally grew up …show more content…
This made me think through how appearance makes people judgmental and how important it is to have your own unique identity. Uglies is a persuasive novel that is very relatable to our society today and I think that the ideas portrayed are important lessons for everyone in society. Therefore, I enjoyed reading this novel and would strongly recommend this book to anyone who has a low self-esteem due to their