Tally Youngblood

Uglies by Scott Westerfeild is about a society of people who have a surgery to turn them into society’s idea of beautiful. These people are called pretties and the ones who don’t have the surgery are call uglies. Tally Youngblood is an ugly who agrees that everyone should be pretty even when they all look the same. She breaks into the Pretty’s mansion and crashes their party. On her way back she met another Ugly named Shay who is against everyone being the same. Shay leaves the day of her birthday, that she shares with Tally. This prevents her from having the surgery because the town doesn’t want anyone to leave. Shay leaves behind a cryptic message that only Tally would be able to decrypt. She follows the clues and finds her way to the Smoke,
Tally is a fifteen years old and lives in Uglyville. She has hazel eyes that are too close together, brown frizzy hair, a patchy complexion, thin lips and a flat nose. In addition, she hates the right side of her face. She is okay with the concept of being Pretty at the beginning of the book because she wanted to be like everyone else. The members of the Smoke could also be a protagonist because they choose to rebel against the society by not becoming pretty. Tally in the beginning of the book is looking forward to the surgery because that means being like everyone else and fitting in. The journey that Shay takes her through changes her mind when she comes across the Smoke. She realizes that the people there are happy being themself and embracing their differences and that she would be taking away homes from many people. The people from the Smoke didn’t think that she was coming and they didn’t believe when she left because she had too much food for the trip. David believes that she is serious about the Smoke and that she is beautiful even though she isn’t a Pretty. David says to Tally,"That's why you're beautiful, Tally."The words made her dizzy for a moment, like the falling feeling of looking into a new Pretty's eyes."Me?""Yes."She laughed, shaking her head clear. "What, with my thin lips and my eyes too close together?""Tally...""And my frizzy hair and squashed-down nose?""Don't say that." His fingers brushed her
They society would give them surgery to prevent that happening. The narrator states: “Back in the days before the operation, Tally remembered, a lot of people, especially young girls, became so ashamed at being fat that they stopped eating. They'd lose weight too quickly, and some would get stuck and would keep losing weight until they wound up like this "model." Some even died, they said at school. That was one of the reasons they'd come up with the operation. No one got the disease anymore, since everyone knew at sixteen they'd turn beautiful. In fact, most people pigged out just before they turned, knowing it would all be sucked away.” (Westerfeild, ) They used the surgery to make them look perfect and have them do whatever they wanted to do before the surgery. The citizen of the society believes that everything should be perfect and that humans should be perfect in order for the society to be the ideal place to live. People who receive the surgery look the same; full lips, symmetrical face, big eyes, no scares, perfect skin and hair. One type of dystopian characteristic is propaganda. Propaganda can be found throughout the book, one time propaganda is used is when Tally and Shay were using the interface ring, “‘Making ourselves feel ugly isn’t fun.’ We are ugly!’ ‘This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.’”(Westerfeild 43) In the book Westerfeild