Anxiety Disorders In Uglies By Scott Westerfeld

Uglies

Anxiety. Depression. Eating Disorder. These are all things that beauty standards can cause. We see that beauty standards have negative effects in the book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. The book starts out by introducing Tally Youngblood, a 15 year old girl who is ugly and how she meets Shay, another 15 year old girl who is ugly. They both have the same birthday so they’re both going to turn 16 on the same day and in this book, when you turn 16, you get an operation that turns you pretty. Shay didn’t want to become pretty so she ran away and told Tally where she was going. Then, when Tally went to get her operation done, the doctor said she couldn’t get the operation done unless Tally led them to where Shay and all of Shay’s old friends

We see this when Tally only wants to be pretty and doesn’t care about anything else because the “Pretty” society seems to be so much better than her ugly town. “I’m an ugly you’re an ugly. We will be for two more weeks. It’s no big deal or anything.” (Westerfeld 81) This quote shows that Tally thinks that the only thing that matters is the way that you look. Her perspective on this changes and she realizes that there’s way more in life than what you look like when she goes to the Smoke and was talking to her friend. “Listen, Tally. That’s not what’s important to me. What’s inside you matters a lot more.” (Westerfeld 278) This quote proves to Tally and the reader that people care not about what you look like but how you act and who you are inside. Tally makes the theme clear when she changes her way of thinking and realizes it’s what’s on the inside that

In the article Beauty Standards by Kate Povey, she tells us how beauty standards have changed and how they have affected more people today. “Beauty standards have always been extremely prevalent throughout human history, and today they drastically affect everyday interaction, the media, and the commercial world.” (Povey) This quote shows how beauty standards are still an issue today, especially because of social media. On social media, anything can be edited to make you look differently. Some people don’t realize that and try to live up to the unrealistic standards that we have created in our heads of what is really pretty. In that same article it describes beauty standards as features that are considered “pretty” in today's society. “They determine what is “beautiful”, from body shape, to facial proportions, to height and weight.” (Povey) This shows that the issue of beauty standards is a problem we face today because we can’t change the way we look. You get judged and sometimes even made fun of because of how you look when you can’t do anything about it. You can’t change the beauty on the outside, but the beauty on the inside is all that matters