Amanda Schaut
Evans/Bendick
ELA ½
22 February, 2023
In 2021, 60% of young people have been excluded by their peers and as a result changed their physical appearance. This creates the idea that the only way to fit in, is to be good looking. The same is in the book, Uglies, where everyone is expected to get a surgery when they turn 16 to turn ‘pretty’ or perfect. Tally is told that she can’t turn pretty unless she betrays her best friend, Shay, and finds a hidden city full of uglies called the ‘smoke’. Tally travels to the smoke but throughout the book she realizes that she belongs there where she can be her own person. Tally then has to clean up the mess she made with her betrayal and save her friends. In the book Uglies, Scott Westerfeld shows that real beauty comes from the inside through
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Cable. On her 16th birthday, instead of getting the surgery, Dr. Cable tells Tally that the only way for her to ever turn pretty is to travel to the smoke and betray her friends. Tally gives into the power that Dr. Cable is exerting because her desire for perfection is so strong. A quote on page 126 says, “Tally closed her eyes. This was it, the moment when she would break her bow to Shay. But a small voice in her exhausted brain reminded her that she was also keeping a promise.”(Westerfeld, 126). This illustrates how Tally is giving in to Dr. Cable's power in order to become pretty and ‘fit in’. Westerfeld incorporates this power struggle to demonstrate how metaphorically blind people can become when it comes to fitting in and looking perfect. When perfection is all that matters, people will lose sight of what's important such as loyalty, love, and friendship, just like Tally did. Again, Westerfeld uses power to tell the reader that what matters most about a person is what’s on the inside, not what they look like or their social standing. His message says to not give into the pressures of