Conformity vs. Individuality Theme Analysis

Uglies plunges the reader into a futuristic, seemingly utopian world in which one’s physical appearance at birth doesn’t matter—at age 16, all teens, who are known as “uglies,” undergo extensive plastic surgery that turns them into “pretties.” Fifteen-year-old Tally looks forward to her operation so that she can join her best friend, Peris, in New Pretty Town across the river and enjoy the endless party that is life as a “new pretty.” This is what Tally has spent her whole life waiting for: a chance to finally be gorgeous and happy, just like all of the other pretties. However, when Tally’s new friend Shay runs away to a mysterious place called the Smoke so that she doesn’t have to receive the operation, Tally (under threat of not being allowed to become pretty herself) grudgingly agrees to cooperate with a government agency known as Special Circumstances to retrieve Shay. As Tally’s journey unfolds, she’s forced to confront the fact that becoming a pretty means conforming to societal standards she didn’t even know existed and that, upon closer inspection, make conforming look significantly less attractive. Through this realization, Uglies makes the case that although at first glance conformity may appear ideal while individuality appears risky and undesirable, in actuality the opposite is true: conforming deprives a person of who they truly are, something the novel portrays as irreparably damaging and even dangerous.

Tally’s government goes to great lengths to make it seem as though conforming is truly the only option. All young people are raised to look forward to their 16th birthday and their pretty surgery, which many see as the first day of their real lives—being ugly is considered a purgatory of sorts, and not truly living. Everyone is taught to desire life as a pretty, in which one is happy, parties nonstop, and is treated kindly and reverently by everyone else. In Tally’s society, then, conforming to the required pretty surgery is the only accepted path to achieving a good life. There are, as far as Tally knows, no other options—while there are rumors that some people are refused their operations, these stories are unproven and possibly just hearsay. Conformity, then, is equated with happiness. This idea gains traction in Tally’s world in part because of the way uglies—that is, the only people who are told that they’re not cute or pretty—are treated. Uglies arrive in Uglyville at age 12, after they graduate from being an adorable littlie (a child). Uglies are the only group in Tally’s world that cannot move freely between the different parts of the greater city—the only time they can legally leave Uglyville is if they go to their parents’ house in the suburbs. Out in public, pretties visibly recoil away from uglies. Uglies like Tally are essentially told that their individuality is horrific, and are the ones who are most heavily policed—in comparison, conformity looks like paradise.

At first, Tally is horrified and bewildered when her friend Shay says that she’s serious about not wanting to undergo the pretty operation. However, when Tally agrees to cooperate with Special Circumstances and follows Shay to the Smoke a few weeks after Shay disappears, it only takes a few days before Tally starts to suspect that there’s something to be said for individuality. Though part of this has to do with living in a culture that outright rejects the idea of “pretty” on principle (as well as her budding romance with David, the young leader of the group), Tally begins to learn how truly dangerous conformity can be when David takes Tally to visit his parents, Maddy and Az, former cosmetic surgeons from Tally’s city. As doctors and researchers (Maddy was part of the “Pretty Committee,” the global group that conducts research and decides what constitutes pretty each year), Maddy and Az got an intimate look at how pretty surgery works. Disturbingly, Maddy discovered that after surgery, most pretties had lesions on their brain that she suspects makes pretties pliant and happy—but individuals who worked in professions where they had to think on their feet and make decisions, such as surgeons and the government agents in Special Circumstances, didn’t have them. What Maddy and Az essentially discovered, and what begins to truly change Tally’s mind about becoming pretty, is that all pretties seem happy for a reason—but that reason isn’t because they finally fit in. Rather, the government has altered their brains to make them happy and deprive them of all independent thought. This major revelation brings about all manner of other revelations regarding independence for Tally. Though as an ugly she was one of the more independent kids who liked doing “tricks” (sneaking out and playing pranks) and thought that habit made her edgy and cool, Maddy notes that many uglies who grow up to work in thinking professions and lose their lesions are the ones who started life as tricksters. She believes it’s possible that the fact that uglies can get away with tricks at all in their overbearing, surveillance-heavy society is because tricks are a test—tricks may be framed as acting out and misbehaving, but those uglies who do tricks might be doing exactly what’s expected of them.

With this, Uglies presents a world in which even the little bit of individuality uglies can achieve may not actually be individuality at all, but part of a greater system of surveillance, control, and brainwashed conformity. Given this, Tally comes to the novel’s most important conclusion: while conforming to the status quo may look like happiness, it’s actually something quite sinister that deprives people of the ability to understand who they are and the culture they inhabit. Genuine individuality, meanwhile, not only gives people control over their lives, but gives them the tools to ask important questions—and, hopefully, to change their culture for the better.