Uglies by Scott Westerfield is a young adult dystopian novel that deals with geopolitics, social and economic totalitarianism, and the spatial analysis of the dynamic of futuristic cities controlled by such a government. In the book, everyone receives dramatic surgery at the age of sixteen that makes them super-humanly beautiful, turning them into Pretties. This procedure was put into place to create peace amongst men by making everyone look the same and has no biological advantages, therefore they are equals. The cities in which the population live are a self-sustainable and controlled by a totalitarian world government that decides where people live, how they work, and how they will look. The government took the shape of the Pretty Committee, …show more content…
It creates the main plot in which Tally and other characters must fight against the system that has oppressed them and the rest of the world. The entirety of the world population lives within cities with well-defined boarders. These cities take the place of countries and are the only remaining form of the state, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as a “politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially one that is sovereign.” While the layout and smaller matters of cities are left to a governing group, their overarching power stems from the Pretty Committee, which acts as a supra-national organization linking each city together. Cities must abide by the Pretty Standards, which are set to regulate the bodies of the people, who receives certain bodily and mental enhancements, and what sects of the population can go without the lesions that would mentally debilitate them. The operation is the center of life in the novel, each aspect of daily living and stages of life being socially, economically, and politically dependent on it. By taking away individualism, the power of the government has reached authoritarianism, in which absolute unquestioned obedience is given to …show more content…
Accessibility to each place, depending on the stage of the operation, is very limited. The cities are divided into several regions- Uglyville, New Pretty Town, Suburbs, and Crumblyville. These are all internal boundaries put into place to separate the cultural regions within the state. Each region reflects the demographic that resides within it, the dynamic and purpose reflecting the culture and purpose of each stage of life. Uglyville is a practical district for children ages twelve to fifteen, meant to educate and prepare them for their next stage of life as Pretties. New Pretty town has little functional purpose, but instead focuses on the entertainment of newly transitioned Pretties, starting immediately after the operation on their sixteenth birthdays. Life in New Pretty Town glorifies the operation and creates a false sense of freedom within the community. Meanwhile, each person is analyzed to determine their future job. The Suburbs are focused on the next stage of life in which Pretties become middle pretties, settling down into their jobs and starting families. Crumblyville is the final stage of life in which residents live farthest from the center city. This lasts from retirement to
In “Uglies” by Scott Westfield the method the government use to strive for a perfect society is by giving everyone who is 16 or older surgery that turn them pretty because they felt that most people tend to be insecure about their appearance when they become a teenager or older . So to get rid
"Skin blemishes made it impossible for me to really enjoy myself. I was always worrying about the way I looked" (Brumberg, p. 87). Woman all around the world share the same problem, they feel unhappy and self-conscious with the appearance of their bodies. In The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, she successfully illustrates the way adolescents begin to change focus from inner to outer beauty in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Through use of personal diaries and historical research, Brumberg shows her readers the physical differences between girls then and now.
The Uglies is a book about a futuristic look of America. There are a lot of futuristic things like hover boards. But this society isn’t perfect like people think. The narrator in this book is tally Youngblood who will be on a journey to find her best friend. In this society everyone is obsessed with beauty. And the Uglies are the people between the ages of 12 and 16 they live in a remote community far from the beautiful people. In this community the Uglies anxiously wait for their 16th birthday. At the age of 16 they go through a mandatory plastic surgery in order to live up to society’s standards. After they go through plastic surgery they will be known as pretties, and they will also live with all of the other gorgeous people. After changing communities they will party all the time and spend most of their time drinking champagne. But then Tally find out that the government is hiding a scary secret about becoming a pretty and she will risk her life and her friends to save them from becoming pretties.
In today society, beauty in a woman seems to be the measured of her size, or the structure of her nose and lips. Plastic surgery has become a popular procedure for people, mostly for women, to fit in social class, race, or beauty. Most women are insecure about their body or face, wondering if they are perfect enough for the society to call the beautiful; this is when cosmetic surgery comes in. To fix what “needed” to be fixed. To begin with, there is no point in cutting your face or your body to add or remove something most people call ugly. “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery” explored the desire of human to become beyond perfection by the undergoing plastic surgery. The author, Camille Pagalia, took a look how now days how Americans are so obsessed
Also on its way to becoming very stagnant and progressing at a very slow rate economically, was the community in 1984. With all of the power in the hands of one individual, Big Brother, there were constant wars, withholding the economy at its current position. In the novel, there is an evident amount of those who have lost their individual self. People are no longer allowed to maintain personal beliefs and must believe what the party tells them to. "And if the party says that it is not four but five- then how many?" "Four." (Orwell 273). By forcing the party members to say that two plus two equals five is an example of mental control.
Despite the state’s glorified rhetoric, Zamyatin reveals the volatile nature of stability when people walk “in twos” (129). This deviation from the norm of four signals a crack in the society’s ability to control its populace. When the government announces the Operation, pandemonium erupts as ciphers run without “[singing] the Hymn” and a couple “shamelessly copulates….without a ticket” (190, 192). The ciphers oppose routine. Before this ultimate requirement to conform, no cipher willingly lends himself to greater society, revealing the human instinct to be free. Even those who passionately embrace society’s standards quickly abandon them. As the expectations of the state clash with the nature of humanity, the plausibility of regulated happiness diminishes and becomes
Operation Beautiful is the pride and joy of Plano Senior High School’s Student Council. Hours and hours of thinking brought them to the conclusion that to celebrate inner beauty one must remove all extremities that girls apply on their face every morning, more commonly known as makeup. On the day of Operation Beautiful, all girls wishing to participate in the festivities shall arrive to school with no artificial products or even natural products on their faces. I, for one, completely agree with the concept, after all, one must often take a step back in order to take two steps forward. We should not have to rely on makeup to make us appear more beautiful than is natural. I get the idea from the most beautiful planet in our solar system. Earth itself! Our Earth is covered with beautiful untouched forests, rolling hills and snowcapped mountains. And people should be expected to emulate the same purity and naturalness.
Like many other dystopian societies the World State is under disguise of being utopian. The governments control on one is so great that individuals of this society are conditioned and brainwashed into an emotionless feeling of happiness. This type of ruling is a complete dictatorship society, where everything is being manipulated according to the wishes of each Controller. The Controllers decide on the rules and laws to make sure everyone is happy. To the Controllers and their caste, the world one lives in is the ideal perfection where there is no room for acceptance of individuality. With individuality comes threat to those who rule. These threats are then sent away to a lonely island where they study their interest without harming the good of society.
The media has had an increasingly destructive effect on young people who are becoming worryingly obsessed with their body image. The media is saturated in sexual imagery in which young people have to face every day. The sheer volume of sexual imagery in the media today has resulted in the vast majority of young people to become hooked on looking as near to perfection everyday by using the latest products and buying the latest fashions. This used to be enough but lately the next step to achieving perfection is cosmetic surgery. Everyone wants to look attractive, especially teenagers who are not only put under massive strain to succeed but to look beautiful and climb the ranks of the social ladder, and it seems that the only way to achieve the much desired beauty is to turn to drastic measures.
The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further into thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population. Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience, conformity and compliance out of people.
...ur trials and manage the city in other ways, has in fact come to an agreement with us to obey our instructions (63e). If the decisions of the city’s governing agents are not thoroughly respected as just and cohesive parts of society, the very structure by which the society stands is subject to collapse.
Statistically this topic is a big issue to everyone based on the environment. At the age of thirteen 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies”. This percentage grows to 78% by the time the time they are seventeen. (Teen and health media). Also, 8,000,000 or more people in the United States have an eating disorder. 90% are women and the other 10% are men. Eating disorders are usually started in the teens, but may start as early as eight. (Teen and health media). Lastly, one in three (37%) articles in leading ten girl magazines included a focus on appearance, and most of the advertisements (50%) used an appeal beauty and sell products. Self-esteem has another contributing factor in media and the way teens view themselves. Only about 4% of women worldwide consider themselves beautiful. (Surprising Self-Esteem Statistics). Only 11% of girls globally are comfortable using the word beautiful to describe them (Surprising Self-Esteem Statistics). 72% of girls feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful .Also, 80% of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful, but do not see their own beauty More than half (54%) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic (Surprising Self-Esteem Statistics).
Close your eyes and imagine the smell of fresh cut grass, the noise of children playing carelessly in the streets, pleasing rows of meticulously constructed houses - seemingly the perfect town. This town is a real place, it’s called Highlands Ranch. Here kids go to school everyday in brightly colored backpacks, families take christmas cards photos with crystal backdrops, soccer moms drive minivans hiding behind the pears they can’t afford, and everyone goes about their day with a smile.
The meaning of beauty has a vast and varied makeup, curving and swaying into the depths of poetry, literature, and history. However, the modern world has skinned the concept of Beauty down to only three words: Thin and Popular. This Modus Operandi and Ponens, respectively, have rooted themselves into all corners of the media and beyond. The industry of fashion, fragrance, and cosmetics nets an annual profit of over thirteen billion dollars in the US alone; why then statistics of poor body image and the problems- both psychologically and medically- remain at lofty and concerning heights? The answer to the question “Why don't I look like that?” asked by Americans, adolescents and young women in particular, is this: It is not what is outside, but what is inside that matters. And they have poorly balanced enzymes and inaccurate interpretations of those around them on the inside.
In a world where everyone aims to be gorgeous, what could go wrong? Tally Youngblood can’t wait for her 16th birthday. Not for anything else, but to become pretty. Each person gets a surgery to fit into the pretty world standards. In this society, normal is ugly.