Uglies: Facing the Future Summary & Analysis

In Tally’s dorm room, she shows Shay some morphos on her wallscreen. Option two is sleek and catlike, and Tally agrees with Shay that it’s probably not legal. Tally’s next morpho is pretty standard. Shay says Tally looks generic in this version, but Tally points out that she looks like Cleopatra. Shay notes that she’s read Cleopatra wasn’t actually beautiful— she was just clever. Tally suggests that Cleopatra was probably a “classic pretty,” but that people had weird ideas about beauty back then and didn’t know about biology. Tally asks Shay to share some of her morphos and she is shocked when Shay says that she never made any. Everyone, even littlies, make morphos, but Shay says she’d rather go hoverboarding. She points out that the doctors do what they want anyway, so morphos are pointless.

Finally, Shay agrees to make a morpho and lets the wallscreen scan her face. A second later, two faces appear on the screen: one looks wild and one looks like she’s daydreaming. The faces represent versions of Shay that are symmetrical, rather than asymmetrical like all uglies’ faces. Shay insists she’d rather have a face with different sides but agrees to go with the wild looking one. The software takes over and makes Shay’s eyes bigger, gives her bigger cheekbones, and defines her jaw. Tally whistles in approval, but Shay groans that she looks like every other pretty. Tally gives the morpho hair, tweaks the eyebrows, and then pulls Shay’s olive skin lighter, toward the average.

Shay tells Tally to stop but Shay refuses to run the software herself. She says she wants to go hoverboarding and that she thinks her face is already “right.” Tally rolls her eyes and says it’s great for an ugly. With a scowl, Shay accuses Tally of not being able to stand her normal face and says that making themselves feel ugly isn’t fun. Tally groans—she doesn’t understand why Shay is so weird about the operation. She points out that when everyone was ugly, everyone judged people on their appearances and people killed each other over their skin color. Tally says that the operation is the only way to make people equal, but Shay suggests that they just make people smarter and asks if they can go hoverboarding. Tally agrees but asks Shay if she doesn’t think the morpho is beautiful. Shay says it’s just a committee’s idea of her.