Beauty Ideals and Cosmetic Surgery in Scott Westerfeld's Novel "Uglies"
Beauty Ideals and Cosmetic Surgery in Scott Westerfeld's Novel

Author: Anonym

Publisher:

Published: 2019-02-17

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9783668905382

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Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, Karlsruhe University of Education, language: English, abstract: Television, social platforms and advertisements are full of them: successful, rich and irresistibly attractive people. Their pretty faces, their beguiling smiles and glamourous appearances have a great influence on our idea of being beautiful. In our recent society beauty is a privilege, which leads to success, money and an unbridled lovelife. We strive for being equal to them. We envy them for their beauty, their fame and their lifestyle. At the same time it is obvious, that this world of glamour and flawlessness is moreoften a world of sham and pretence. High prices are paid for a beautyful face or a slim figure. Being under pressure to fit into a certain beauty ideal, the people in our society are victims of a beauty mania, which demands a lot. Not only a ridiculous high consumption of cosmetics and beauty products, but also more drastic measures like cosmetic surgeries or symptomes like anorexia and bulimia can be seen as a sign for that. But let us imagine a world without this beauty competition. A world, in which everyone is equally pretty due to a compulsory cosmetic surgery as a teenager. Scott Westerfeld creates such a scenery in his young dystopian fiction novel "Uglies" and takes a critical approach to a society, which is only based on being pretty. On the basis of this book, I want to have a closer look on our modern beauty ideals and how they influence our recent society. Or rather how our society influences beauty ideals. What problems arise with this beauty mania? What does Westerfeld criticises in his novel? I also want to pay attention on the beauty ideals in a historical context and how they changed over time.

Uglies
Uglies

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1442419814

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A fresh repackaging of the bestselling Uglies boks...the series that started the whole dystopian trend!

Pretties
Pretties

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-11-11

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1416987347

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The second installment of Scott Westerfeld’s New York Times bestselling and award-winning Uglies series—a global phenomenon that started the dystopian trend. Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. But beneath all the fun—the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom—is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally’s ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what’s wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold. Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life—because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.

Extras
Extras

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-05-27

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1847389236

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At the end of Specials, the conclusion to the Uglies trilogy, things in Tally's futuristic world had stabilised. The walls between the social classes - the uglies, pretties and specials - had been torn down. So Tally took off to live on her own in the wild. Fast forward... Tally discovers another brand new world. In Extras, it's all about who you know, and how much you have. It's just like LA. Only Paris and Nicole are way dead...

Specials
Specials

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1442430087

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When she is turned into a super-modelesque super-fighting machine, Tally, a former ugly, is ordered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid in a carefully engineered world of perfection where she refuses to play by the rules.

A Face for Picasso
A Face for Picasso

Author: Ariel Henley

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0374314098

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A Schneider Family Book Award Honor Book for Teens "Raw and unflinching . . . A must-read!" --Marieke Nijkamp, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends "[It] cuts to the heart of our bogus ideas of beauty." –Scott Westerfeld, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Uglies I am ugly. There's a mathematical equation to prove it. At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome -- a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it. Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous appearance-altering procedures. Surgeons would break the bones in their heads and faces to make room for their growing organs. While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement. Ariel explores beauty and identity in her young-adult memoir about resilience, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life, and yourself, back together time and time again.

Transforming Bodies
Transforming Bodies

Author: H. Steinhoff

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1137493798

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At the turn of the twenty-first century, American media abound with images and narratives of bodily transformations. At the crossroads of American, cultural, literary, media, gender, queer, disability and governmentality studies, the book presents a timely intervention into critical debates on body transformations and contemporary makeover culture.

Uglies: Shay's Story (Graphic Novel)
Uglies: Shay's Story (Graphic Novel)

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Del Rey

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0345527224

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“This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.”—Shay Uglies told Tally Youngblood’s version of life in Uglyville and the budding rebellion against the Specials. Now comes an exciting graphic novel revealing new adventures in the Uglies world—as seen through the eyes of Shay, Tally’s rebellious best friend who’s not afraid to break the rules, no matter the cost. A few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, Shay eagerly awaits her turn to become a Pretty—a rite-of-passage operation called “the Surge” that transforms ordinary Uglies into paragons of beauty. Yet after befriending the Crims, a group of fellow teens who refuse to take anything in society at face value, Shay starts to question the whole concept. And as the Crims explore beyond the monitored borders of Uglyville into the forbidden, ungoverned wild, Shay must choose between the perks of being Pretty and the rewards of being real.

Uglies: Cutters (Graphic Novel)
Uglies: Cutters (Graphic Novel)

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Ballantine Group

Published: 2012-12-04

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0345535308

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Experience the riveting, dystopian Uglies series seen as never before—through the eyes of Shay, Tally Youngblood’s closest and bravest friend, who refuses to take anything about society at face value. “From the moment we are born, we are considered threats in need of ‘special’ management. We are watched and shaped and exploited by a force most of us never see. . . . All to keep us safe. . . . Do you feel safe?! Or do you feel like you’re in a cage?”—Shay In Pretties, Tally Youngblood and her daring best friend, Shay, both underwent the operation that turned them from ordinary Uglies into stunning beauties. Now this thrilling new graphic novel reveals Shay’s perspective on living in New Pretty Town . . . and the way she sees it, there’s more to this so-called paradise than meets the eye. With the endless parties and custom-made clothes, life as a Pretty should be perfect. Yet Shay doesn’t feel quite right. She has little to no memory of her past; it’s as if something in her brain has inexplicably changed. When she reunites with Tally and the Crims—her rebellious group of friends from Uglyville—she begins to recall their last departure to the wild, and the headstrong leader she used to be. And as she remembers the truth about what doomed their escape, Shay decides to fight back—against the status quo, against the mysterious Special Circumstances, even against her own best friend.

Pretties with Ugly Thoughts
Pretties with Ugly Thoughts

Author: Thérèse Remus

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2013-09-18

Total Pages: 37

ISBN-13: 3656500460

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Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik), course: Figurations of Survival in Dystopian (Young Adult) Fiction, language: English, abstract: Scott Westerfeld`s trilogy Uglies – Pretties – Specials tells us about the 15-year-old girl Tally who lives in a society whose citizens (have to) undergo an operation in order to be made pretty as soon as they get 16 years old. The books could easily be taken for prominently criticizing callomania, i.e. the excessive love of and craving for beauty and the respective extreme efforts people make to appear beautiful and thus correspond to a certain ideal. It is widely acknowledged that Western countries have developed into societies whose citizens spend remarkable amounts of time and money in the “improvement” or “maintenance” of their fitness and body appearance. Since the 1980s, an increasing number of so-called body image disorders is reported. More and more and even younger people suffer from a systematic depreciation of their bodies as they compare them to ideal and imaginative body images (Menninghaus, Winfried: Das Versprechen der Schönheit. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp, 2007: 250-251). It therefore seems a first and logical approach to see Westerfeld`s books as a major criticism of today`s (Western)societies and media which make people perceive their bodies as negative and inferior. As they are considered to be dystopian fictions, we anticipate Westerfeld`s novels to carry a warning reference to the reader`s present society. In this sense, Westerfeld`s books offer a most sinister view on how far we could get if we are advancing technologies like aesthetic surgery and genetic engineering without reconsidering how, why and to what extent we use them. We assume this critical warning to be embodied in the protagonist Tally who tries to succeed in disengaging from the ideology indoctrinated by her city. This paper wants to “track” the critical approaches we find in the novels and examine whether the narrations really live up to the criticism apparently promised. It will look at the concepts of beauty the protagonist Tally is confronted with and refer to current scientific and popular discourses about these respective concepts. Finally, a connection shall be drawn between the issues raised in the novels and the genre chosen to work on them. Why are “beauty” and “body” relevant topics to be treated in Young Adult fiction? And how does the genre Young Adult literature change the portrayal and reception of the issues? Questions like these shall be dealt with in order to review the books` message in the context of their intended readership.