Uglies - Scott Westerfeld

"Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world-- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally's choice will change her world forever..."


The premise of Uglies is that in the future when kids reach 16, they all have mandatory plastic surgery to turn their bodies into a perfect standard of beauty based on human brain's reaction to visual stimulus. Unfortunately (and this is a slight spoiler, so my apologies, but it really is an element that is pretty obvious from page one, though not clearly stated until later), when the teenagers are having the surgeries to make them pretty, the surgeons change their brains, too, to determine their decision-making capabilities. Taking away their capacity for independent thought, questioning and even sense. Basically, the pretty surgery makes most people stupid, unless the occupation that the government determines for them requires intelligence. So far so good, a really interesting concept with the ability to explore stereotyping, body image and self worth.

However Westerfeld wasted the concept and his moral arguments are a little dubious and not well fleshed out. While on one level he mildly criticizes the idea of basing a society on a hierarchy of physical looks, the characters repeatedly interact within that hierarchy, calling each other "pretty" and "ugly" at every turn and defining "pretty" people very specifically. 

Ultimately, the arguments of why the government requires the pretty surgeries make a lot of (horrific) sense in the stories. The surgeries solve anorexia, heath problem, bring world peace, and save the environment. Plastic surgery is made to sound fun and Westerfeld literally makes no compelling arguments against body alteration and doesn't even dip a toe into the idea of self worth, or lack of, these characters must have. At the same time, I'm left feeling that Westerfeld thinks it is a bad idea, though he is not convincing.

Unfortunately, some parts of this story where actually engaging and for a while I wanted to find out what happened. But his characters never develop deep self-respect or intelligent motivation for their actions, and even when their decisions seem healthy, Westerfeld makes a better argument for the unhealthy decisions. Now I realize that I didn't even talk about the uber-annoying slang language he develops for the Pretties and Specials. I'll just say "bubbly" and leave it at that.

Age Rating 12+. Nothing at all untoward.