The Power of "Pretty"

Scott Westerfield, I finally forgive you for stealing the name of my main character. You see, it was about a year ago this time that I began flipping through Uglies in Borders, after being intrigued by the cover and the title. However, I then realized that on almost every other page was the super cool name that I had come up with for a character in my play that I had been working on all semester in Oxford.

I had a minor artistic tantrum in the bookstore before storming out.

Luckily, this wound to my sensitive creative self has begun healing enough that last week when I saw the book at the library I decided to give it a shot. There is also something appealing about getting a book for free instead of paying for it, although with the way I rack up fines at the library it probably is the same as buying the book in the end.

I was not disappointed. Uglies is one of those 500-page dialogue-driven books that one can read in two or three days (think Twilight or Harry Potter). It keeps you turning the pages and is not hard to comprehend.

However, though it is a "breeze read," unlike many teen books these days, Uglies asks probing questions about identity and the nature of beauty that won't be easily swept from your mind after you have turned the last page.

The book revolves around Tally, an "ugly" who lives on the outskirts of society with other kids who are like her. Lucky for Tally, though, she is nearing her 16th birthday, the age when each individual receives the operation that will turn him or her into a "pretty": big eyes, perfectly aligned features...you get the idea. The inhabitants of Westerfield's future world are kept in line by the fear that they won't be turned pretty, and once you are pretty, there is nothing more to worry about.

"Come on," you might think "Where's the Orwellian 'Big Brother,' L'Engle's 'It,' Bradbury's book burnings, Huxley's 'World State.'" Where is this society's scare tactics and torture methods, its restrictions on human freedoms? Scott Westerfield's future civilization doesn't need scare tactics or torture methods to keep people in check, because it is able to manipulate the very cores of people: their self-image and self-worth.

"That's the worst thing they all do to you," says a character fighting against the "pretty" regime. "The worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You're all brainwashed into thinking you're Ugly."

Personally, I feel like I am bombarded by "pretty" every day through television, magazines, and films.

Thin is "pretty."

Long eyelashes are "pretty."

A flawless complexion is "pretty."

Likewise, I am therefore left with a laundry list of what is "not pretty," and usually I end up in this latter column.

So what can you do to escape being "un-pretty?"

You buy a gym pass. You buy organic "healthy foods" or opt for a whole diet program. You buy make up and new clothes. You go for a nose job or color contacts or get my hair colored, racing to stay ahead of your own gnawing insecurity. And of course, you need to stay in touch with what it pretty, so you buy the magazines, and the cycle continues.

Face it, having people thinking they aren't pretty enough is good for business, and it's a business that has been continuing for hundreds of years (think whalebone corsets and woman having ribs removed to fit into them).

Even starting to read Uglies I was somewhat startled to find a main character with self proclaimed "muddy, small eyes, and frizzy hair." This is not the stuff that a movie adaptation is made of.

Of course, I did have my qualms with this book. While Tally and the other main characters are convincing, the minor characters and bad guys in Uglies are bland and stereotypical. Also, Tally spends far too much time wandering around in the wilderness trying to decipher clues for my liking (if I wanted to go on a scavenger hunt I would be outside instead of reading, alright?)

But Uglies serves as a good reminder that being "pretty" as a society defines "pretty" isn't everything, and that the pursuit of "pretty" can be downright dangerous. And, it posits that maybe, just maybe, people are pretty the way they are.