Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series presents a society that regulates touch not through laws and mandates that can easily be broken, but by rewiring the brain chemistry of its citizens so that they do not want to mess with the wrong people. The protagonist, Tally, undergoes two such transformations in the series: from Ugly to Pretty and from Pretty to Special. Following a character through these transformations makes for an effective case study in the effects of the operations on a person's relationship to touch. Tally starts off ugly and in love with an ugly boy and ends up special and unable to physically express her love for anyone. As Tally's anatomy and brain chemistry are altered, her ability to relate to others through touch deteriorates, leading her to a ritualized practice of self-harm. In the third novel, Specials, Tally, once romantic and affectionate, can only remember her desire for touch when she harms herself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay When Tally is a hoodlum in the first novel, she has never undergone psychotropic surgery. Her entire body is natural and the only obstacles to her expression of intimacy are socially programmed. When she first meets David, the Ugly rebel from New Smoke, she is completely bowled over by his admission that he finds her beautiful. Before sharing their first kiss, they debate at length whether a person with an imperfect and unchanged face can be beautiful or not. To David, who grew up in a rebel camp that disapproves of plastic surgery, Tally is tragically hard on herself. David tells him, “Whatever the reason for this brain damage, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: you are brainwashed into believing that you are ugly” (Uglies 276). For Tally, "ugly" is not exclusively a description of her physical appearance. To her, her natural face and body are signs of immaturity. She doesn't feel like her ugly body represents her true self and thinks she will be more mature and authentic after surgery. She is very surprised when she kisses David and feels true romantic feelings for him. As she processes her confusing feelings, she remembers the relationships she saw between her friends in the Ugly dorms. She remembers that "the Uglies kissed...but it always felt like nothing mattered until you were pretty" (Uglies 280). David is Tally's first boyfriend and so all her experiences with kissing and touching up until now have been second-hand. Based on social programming, she would never have imagined that a kiss with another Ugly could seem meaningful or important. According to her, most ugly kisses don't count. Remembering her kiss with David, she thinks that “it mattered” (Uglies 280). The idea that a person's "true self" requires transformation to achieve is not exclusive to Tally's world. In an article titled “Makeover as Takeover: Scenes of Affective Domination on Makeover TV,” Brenda R. Weber discusses the messages that derive from makeover-centered reality television shows. In many cases, the shows emphasize that an unattractive and disreputable physical appearance creates a disconnect between a person's true inner beauty and their appearance: [T]he reason one needs/deserves a makeover is an “unnatural” separation between outside and outside. inside, between internal subjectivity andexternal meaning of individuality. Friends function here as the mirror reflecting incompatible ontologies. In this regard, it is the responsibility and obligation of the friend to direct the woman whose appearance is "not as beautiful as her" towards makeup and makeover, because they are tools offering necessary rectification, devices that can alter exteriors to mean more fully. beautiful interiors (Weber 78). Although Tally's circumstances are a bit more extreme than those of a reality TV show, Tallyn originally has no problem with this cute operation and is tasked with "rescuing" Shay on the run so she can being brought back to town and essentially forced to participate in the "necessary" operation. Tally's search for Shay leads her to the Smoke where David lives. As the friend from the makeover show who must lure the "fashion victim" toward the cure that is reality TV, Tally must save Shay from being misled and avoiding surgery. Tally, like the people on makeover shows, believes that a person's "real" self is a "pretty" self. Defending her interest in this cute operation, Tally says, "Maybe it's just because they're ugly that the Uglies always fight and pick on each other, because they're not happy about who they are. Well, I want to be happy and look like a pretty girl." the real person is the first step" (Uglies 84). Shay and Tally disagree on the operation because they disagree on what makes them human. For Tally, being pretty means being For Shay, keeping the face she was born with makes her more authentic. Shay tells Tally, "I'm not afraid of looking like that" (Uglies 84). ugly couples outside their nameless town and thinks that ugly relationships can be real For Tally, being pretty is the only way to live a normal life or find happiness. It's an act of touching that makes. changing Tally's mind. Hearing David call her beautiful and recognizing her own budding attraction to David fascinates and overwhelms Tally to the point that she is ready to let her guard down when she kisses David and realizes that the kiss means something. thing, she also realizes that she likes David in his current body with his current face. When she touches him, she stops noticing his imperfections and begins to perceive him as a source of support and comfort. When they kiss before kissing, she discovers that "her body was warm in the pre-dawn cold and formed something solid and certain in Tally's shaken reality" (Uglies 279-280 ). Touch makes David feel permanent in Tally's life. Most of the people she was close to became pretties before her and forgot about her. The permanence created by the act of touch makes Tally feel safer than before. She decides to destroy the tracking device that Special Circumstances gave her so that she, Shay, and David don't have to go back to town and get pretty. She walks to the fire and "grabs the pendant, squeezing the unyielding metal until her muscles ache, as if to force upon herself the almost unthinkable fact that she really might remain ugly all her life. But... somehow, not ugly at all” (Uglies 281). ).Kissing David changes Tally's perception of what it means to be ugly. Before this moment, Tally referred to being pretty as looking “like a real person” (Uglies 84). Kissing and touching another ugly person forces Tally to change her ideas about what makes a person "real" and what makes a person exist. The idea that touch can provide a sense of identity and individuality is notnot new nor was it invented for the post-apocalyptic world of Westerfeld. In The Inner Touch: Archeology of a Sensation, Daniel Heller-Roazen elucidates an ancient idea of ​​Aristotle's. He writes: "While the Cartesian cogito ergo sum derives from the being of cognition, the Aristotelian formation links existence to sensation, in a chain more aptly described, for this reason, as 'I feel, therefore I am » (sentio, ergo sum). " (Roazen 61). This construct definitely applies to Tally. She tries to break out of the socially scripted mentality, listening to David's explanations of why the government is wrong and why she doesn't need surgery to be pretty. This discussion only leads to an argument until they touch, and finally kiss. The moment of touching gives Tally a feeling of reality and also makes her love for David real. act of touching is also an act of liberation. Tally's freedom proves short-lived when Special Circumstances finds Smoke anyway. The Specials kill David's father and turn Shay against her. of the only people alive to know about pretty brain damage, Tally chooses to become pretty and writes herself a letter so that she remembers to resist the government and take two pills that David's mother gives her that would be able to destroy brain damage. Since Shay has never heard of brain damage, Tally is the only Ugly who is fully aware that her brain will be tampered with. Even with this realization, Tally's ugly memories fade considerably when she becomes pretty. Having forgotten David and his ugly life, Tally enters into a relationship with a boy named Zane. Kissing him brings back memories of his ugly days and helps him focus. The first time Zane and Tally kiss, she remembers David for the first time since her Pretty operation. They begin to kiss and "after a long moment, the two parted a little, Tally's eyes still closed. She felt his breath against her, his hand warm and soft on the back of her neck. 'David,' he whispered -she” ( Jolies 58). At first glance, this seems like a typical case of saying the wrong name during an intimate encounter. Tally sees things this way and is initially embarrassed by it. Rather than responding with jealousy or suspicion, Zane becomes very excited that Tally remembers her life before becoming Pretty. Both realize that the excitement generated by the kisses helps remind them of their lives before Pretty. Once this discovery is made, their intimacy deteriorates a little. Rather than kissing or touching to feel close to each other as a romantic couple, they start kissing to refresh their memories. The first kiss Tally shares with Zane literally recalls her life as Ugly. Her memories “all seemed like a million years ago, but she could see herself—her ugly self—kissing David” (Uglies 60). The kiss becomes a powerful tool for Tally, literally capable of restoring memories that were scrambled by programming. It should be noted, however, that unlike Tally's kiss with David, which single-handedly changed Tally's opinion on society, Tally's kisses with Zane are not "cures" in themselves. Her first kiss with Zane is more about remembering David than sharing contact with Zane. Furthermore, remembering that she loved an ugly boy doesn't liberate Tally, but it does make her remarkably uncomfortable. She is torn between the feelings she remembers for him and confusion about why he is no longer with her. Since Tally has forgotten why David allowed her to separate from him andbecoming a pretty one, Tally begins using kisses not only to remind herself of her ugly existence, but also to cling to Zane and establish his presence as permanent. The kisses give her reassurance that Zane is better. for her only David, and that she makes the right decision by forgetting David. When she lived at The Smoke, she was told that she would have to take the two experimental pills that David's family had given her to erase her brain damage, and then David would come back for her. When she decides David isn't coming back, she takes one of the pills and gives the other to Zane. To reassure herself that she had made the right decision, Tally “grabbed the back of [Zane’s] neck and kissed him” (Pretties 97). She remembers that "David didn't come to save her" and then concludes that David is "either dead or he must not care what happened to him. He was ugly, and Zane was handsome and bubbly, and there he was” ( Jolies 97). In this case, touching Zane is not about experiencing touch or sharing intimacy, but about establishing Zane's permanence. Tally's life with David has been chaotically taken away from her, and as she grabs Zane and hugs him, she is reminded that he is still here and won't have to leave her. The pills slowly begin to affect Zane and Tally, but almost all of the pretty One Who Knows Brain Damage tries desperately to erase them. Before the pills kick in, Zane and Tally realize that touch isn't enough to completely combat their mental programming. On romantic evenings together, they restore their mental clarity through kisses and touches and attempt to supplement these effects with self-abuse. Zane encourages Tally to take pills known as "calorie purgers", which are usually intended to help people lose weight. Tally initially thinks Zane is concerned about his size but soon learns he has a different motivation. He tells her, "Hunger focuses your mind. In fact, any kind of excitement works... Like kissing someone new. It works very well" (Pretties 61). Surprisingly, Zane tells his girlfriend that starving her body will help him achieve the same goals as a kiss. This moment shows that both have lost the ability to allow touch to be sufficient in itself. It becomes a means to an end, similar to any adrenaline-increasing behavior. Tally spends most of the second book starving and begins to noticeably lose weight. The constant hunger allows her to focus and the kisses become a way to focus on a task she and Zane want to accomplish together. On one occasion, Zane asks Tally how to go down an elevator shaft and, "Instead of answering, Tally kissed him again." She didn't remember exactly how, but knew that if she stayed bubbly, it would come back to her. " (Jolies 73). The exhilaration of the kiss and the ascension itself allows Tally to remember what she is doing. The intention behind this kiss, to revive her memory and maintain her mental focus, is exactly the same motivation behind her potentially dangerous weight loss activity When she took the calorie purgers, "she felt as if a thin plastic film between her and the rest of the world was peeling away" (Pretties 62). As a Pretty, Tally does not fully engage in touch like she does as an Ugly. Despite this, she is still able to have a romantic relationship and share touch without actually getting sick. touch is a sense that Tally can trust. When she first sees David as a pretty one, she is surprised to see how ugly he seems. Looking at his face is strange because,through Pretty Eyes, he is not as handsome as he was for Ugly Tally. It's the touch that reminds her of her feelings for David. Clinging to him during a hoverboard ride, "The feel of David's body... was so familiar -- even his smell made her memories spin... She wanted to take back all the stupid, pretty thoughts she had" d got his first glimpse of his face” (Pretties 325). Touch restores Tally's emotional memory of David. As Jolie, the information she receives through touch is more honest than the information she receives through the sense of sight. Although Tally's society is fictional and no research has been conducted into its events, writers like Étienne Bonnot de Condillac have written about how touch compares to the other senses. In the Treatise on Sensations, Condillac says that “touch is the sense which instructs all the others” (236). When Pretty Tally touches David, she stops seeing him as unattractive. The familiarity of touch, as Condillac says, informs her of what she really feels about him and in fact transforms the way her other senses perceive him. Condillac believes that, as Tally discovers, senses other than touch can be deceptive. Describing a child who is first learning to use and trust his senses, he writes: "We have a prejudice which makes us assume that when an object pleases us in some respects it is good on the whole." . Likewise, the boy had seemed surprised that the people he loved most were not the most beautiful” (Condillac 176). Throughout the Uglies series, Tally struggles with her feelings for David, no matter how altered her mind is and no matter how unattractive he seems to her. He's not the nicest person she's ever met by far, but he's constantly on her mind. Like the child Condillac describes, Pretty Tally is surprised to still feel such deep feelings for David when she holds him. Before they touch in Pretties, Tally's sense of sight tells her that David is very different from her, to the point of being unacceptable. She initially bases her opinions on the asymmetry of David's face and the imperfections of his body. It is touch that makes David familiar to her again and narrows the gap between David as ugly and Tally as pretty. In Pretties, Tally learns to rediscover the truth through touch. The next operation she undergoes tests her ability to share physical affection, much less derive a sense of honesty from it. Her forced transformation from Pretty to Special is in some ways more compromising than her transformation from Ugly to Pretty. Beyond brain damage, the difference between Uglies and Pretties is largely in appearance. Promotions are still modified. Their minds are programmed to look for differences between themselves and others. Specials are programmed to believe they are perfect. When Tally tries to get closer to Zane, she becomes hyper-aware of his imperfections and barely remembers why she was attracted to him in the first place. Like her first meeting with David as Jolie, Tally's first meeting with Zane as Special is very uncomfortable. He no longer seems handsome to him. To be fair, Zane is in terrible physical condition after taking an experimental pill that was supposed to remove his brain damage. As a Special, Tally is programmed to look for imperfections in others, and Zane has more of those than a regular Pretty. Zane and Tally hope that a kiss can force Tally out of her special mind and help her rediscover her love for Zane. Tally continues to struggle to rememberthe attraction she once felt for Zane. When he finds her, he hopes to be able to kiss her and help her remember how she felt. Zane remembers the story of how David helped Tally fight her ugly insecurities, and how their kiss completely changed her view of the world. Zane wrongly believes that Tally refuses love from pretty or ugly people because they don't seem attractive to her. In reality, the problem is touch. Even though Tally is disturbed by Zane's appearance, she tries to fight her mental programming and kiss him anyway: She moves closer, her hands pushing inside his clothes. She wanted to get out of her stealth suit, no longer be alone, no longer invisible. Arms around him, she held him tight, hearing his breath catch as his mortal hands gripped tighter. Her senses brought her everything about him: his heart beating gently in his throat, the taste of his mouth, his unwashed scent cut by the salt spray. But then his fingers brushed her cheek and Tally felt their trembling. No, she said silently. The shaking was gentle, almost non-existent, as faint as the echoes of rain falling a mile away. But they were everywhere, on the skin of his face, in the muscles of his arms around her, in his lips against hers – her whole body shivered like a child's in the cold. And suddenly Tally could see inside him: his damaged nervous system, the corrupted connections between body and brain. She tried to erase the image from her mind, but it only became clearer. After all, it was designed to spot weaknesses and take advantage of the frailties and flaws in random elements. Do not ignore them (Specials 194). Tally's desire to shed her clothes and be fully honest with Zane indicates that she has not completely lost her desire for touch. She describes feeling alone, even invisible, and wanting Zane to take her out of her isolation. She is at ease feeling his heartbeat and feeling his closeness until she brushes his cheek and remembers how different he (as Sick Pretty) is from her and the other Specials. Once she notices the twitching of his cheek, that awareness overwhelms her and she can no longer focus on anything else. Beyond appearance, it is touch that creates the greatest barrier between the Specials and the rest of the world. Tally cannot enjoy contact with non-Specials, but also feels uncomfortable when touched by Specials, including members of the group called Cutters to which she belongs. When Fausto, a special boy Tally knew when they were both pretty, puts his arms around Tally: "She pulled away. The Cutters touched each other all the time, but she wasn't used to this side- "It made her feel even stranger that Zane hadn't joined them yet" (Specials 11). the reason she touches them This also shows that she wants the intimacy and closeness that contact with Zane brought, not just the physical sensation of touch. There is a disconnect between her desire for a meaningful relationship, however. and the way her brain is wired doesn't appeal to her, but he's one of the only people alive whose touch she can tolerate. Desperate to remember her love for Zane and stay focused enough to do so. To help him become special with her, Tally turns to cutting. The reasons why Tally cuts herself are sometimes misunderstood in the novel. When Dr. Cable, the woman responsible for creating The Specials, sees the clippings ofTally, she supposes that they come from a form of masochism. She asks, “Is it really so wonderful to cut yourself?” I have to think about it the next time I do Specials so young” (Specials 335). In the article “Self and Sacrifice: A Phenomenonological Psychology of Sacred Pain,” Ariel Glucklich explains the limitations of understanding self-harm solely as a masochistic experience driven by pain. She says: “[People who self-harm] cannot be reduced to perversion because they are profiting from something hurtful they do to their body. To understand the nature of self-harm...and its positive function, we must examine the nature of self-harm. the person as ego and organism, and pain as a special signal within this complex organism” (Glucklich 491). Before examining Tally's personal reasons for circumcision, it is important to place it in the context of her society. In Specials, the Cutters don't all have the same reasons for cutting, but it's easy for them to look the same. Tally's entire group of Specials named themselves the Cutters based on their shared habit of self-harming in search of mental clarity. All Cutters have numerous cuts on their arms, and these cuts function as both fashion statements and mental focus tools. The pain of tearing flesh serves to create mental clarity, but the Cutters as a group seem to value the aesthetics and group identity involved in cutting more than its tactile value. Cutters often sit in a circle and pass blades before important missions so they can proceed with clear focus. One such exchange occurs between Shay and Tally when they make the decision to save Zane from New Pretty Town and convince Dr. Cable to make him special. Shay gives Tally a blade to cut herself with, as usual, but becomes shocked when Tally breaks a Cutter tradition. Instead of cutting her arms like most Cutters do, Tally takes the knife by the blade and clasps her hand around it. Shay says, “Wait, not your hand” (Specials 95). Tally ignores Shay and continues what she is doing. After Tally cuts herself, Shay reminds her that "it's a tradition to use the arms" (96). Tally never explains why she cut her hand and Shay, although confused, drops the subject. In some contexts, Shay's worry can seem like splitting hairs. Cutting your hands is not inherently more dangerous than cutting your arms. Shay isn't worried about Tally cutting herself, but that Tally is breaking with tradition. The way she self-harms is different from the way other Specials cut themselves, eliminating the excuse that cutting is a group activity for her. Tally cutting her hand rather than her arms signifies that she distinguishes her self-harm from the self-harm in which her social group engages. She states that she has feelings for a Pretty and therefore maintains a part of her old identity from before she joined the Cutters. In an article titled "The Voice on the Skin: Self-Harm and Merleau-Ponty's Theory of Language," Janice McLane argues that creating boundaries between oneself and the rest of the world is often a motivation for abusive behavior. self-harm. According to McLane, “self-harm helps the self-harmer to reestablish firm boundaries between self and others” (114). In Tally's case, she forms a boundary between herself and the only group of people with whom she can fully interact. She reminds herself that she doesn't want the Cutters to be her only identity and that her desire to reconnect with Zane is also a crucial part of whoshe is. Cutting off her hand is an act of self-affirmation for Tally, one that goes against the wishes and expectations of her boss, Shay. McLane's article explains how autonomy and self-control can contribute to the attractiveness of the cup. She writes: “Although self-harm causes harm, that harm is not caused by others. It is initiated, defined and completed by the mutilator herself, to the formal exclusion of any other person” (McLane 114). The scars on Tally's hand indicate feelings that only she has, which set her apart from the other Cutters. Tally's control over her cuts is very important to her, since skin can easily be replaced in Tally's world, she could easily have surgery to erase all of her scars. She is also able to completely erase the pain of cutting with a medical spray whenever she wants. This adds extra layers to Tally's cutting behavior that 21st century cutters don't have. lived in a city or heard about the operation to become pretty. When he asks her about her scars, she replies, "[Specials] only have scars if we want them to, so they always mean something. It means I love Zane" (160). Through this explanation, Tally argues that female circumcision began to lose its meaning as a form of violent contact. Tally's incision, while physically painful, is much more visual than tactile. The pain she feels Excision is often secondary to the visual and symbolic meaning of the act. As Glucklich says, “any theory of self-harm that views pain as a monolithic sensation, directly linked to tissue damage, is doomed to failure.” It fails above all by distorting the fact that pain is an extremely rich mental event. The range of mental factors that influence the perception of pain is impressive” (Glucklich 490). For Tally, the biggest mental factor is her desire to stay connected to her feelings. The cuts themselves remind her that deep down she longs to touch Zane and plans to "save" him from being pretty so he can be special and become her boyfriend again. Cutting doesn't replace touch, but reminds her that touch is important to her, regardless of how Zane's quivering skin feels. to his special body. For Tally, self-harm creates a feeling of empowerment. Glucklich writes: “The cutting of the skin and the flow of blood are done intentionally for the reinforcement of a higher telos or purpose. The act of self-directed violence asserts the domination of their ego over lower bodily systems” (Glucklich 501). In Tally's case, her higher goal is to stay in love with Zane and not lose him like she lost David when she became Pretty. In Zane's opinion, Tally's cutting is not a sign that she has control over her life, but rather a sign that she is losing control. He asks her, “What makes you not feel obligated to do this?” (Special 142). Asking what feeling she's missing, Zane identifies Tally's lack of contact and lack of emotional connection with others as the culprits for her self-harm. For him, the behavior is not a means of empowerment, but rather a means of self-harm. a coping mechanism to help him deal with his inability to touch. Eventually, Tally gives up the cuts to please Zane, but she still benefits from looking at her scars and remembering why she created them. Their visual presence reminds her of who she is and her true desires, and may be enough without her continuing to self-harm. Tally makes no effort to hide her cuts fromothers. This sets Tally apart from most modern self-harmers, at least according to McLane. She writes, “Contrary to many medical and lay opinions, self-harmers rarely seek to display their injuries or behavior in public, or to manipulate others into self-harm” (McLane 115). The self-harmers McLane studies are usually sexual. trauma survivors who may need to hide or conceal their trauma to avoid retaliation from abusers. Slicing in Tally's world works very differently from the most common case studies of slicing in the 21st century. Tally doesn't self-harm to hide a secret. She wears her scars openly and therefore has little to lose by self-harming to manipulate others and get her own way. She does this in a town called Diego where she is arrested and hospitalized for having a special body. In Diego there are no promotions. Diego's doctors see that the town of Tally built her as a weapon and feel that she is not safe to keep. A member of the medical staff tells Tally that she will not be allowed to leave until she has another operation to make her a regular Pretty. This is when Tally chooses to become manipulative with her self-harm. When her special body is threatened, the scars are no longer enough to keep Tally focused on Zane. Tally recalls, "During those few moments when she was kissing Zane, she had imagined that she wanted to be normal" and quickly decides, "Now that someone was threatening to reduce her to average, she couldn't bear the thought any longer." being able to look at Zane without disgust, to touch him, to kiss him. But not if it meant being changed again against his will” (Specials 256-257). As previously mentioned, cutting gives Tally a way to remember her feelings and have control in a world where her body and mind can be completely altered without her consent. Going back from Special to Pretty could mean erasing Tally's progress toward having feelings again. Determined to be freed, Tally “pulled her fist back and gave him the hardest punch she could. Pain shot through her again...If she started to hurt, someone would have to open the door” (Specials 257). In this case, Tally uses violent and aggressive tactile behavior to alarm the hospital staff and give them freedom. The act of self-harm is different in that she cuts herself with other Cutters. She does not have a medical spray to end her pain. Whatever harm she does to her body, she will have to live with her self-harm. is not entirely under his control and has become a means of expressing his helplessness. A similar idea recurs in McLane's writings about survivors of sexual abuse who have lost control for different reasons. She writes: “The need to speak builds and moves outward, but. encounters a barrier of silence. By crossing this line, the abuse survivor is forced to withdraw into herself; in a box, so to speak, within which she must play and express the drama of her experience” (110). Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay via By punching the walls, Tally communicates how dangerous she has been forced to become and how angry she is that she has been changed against her will. The use of the word "drama" is very appropriate to describe Tally's behavior, which is intended to prove a serious point. As she punched the walls, she "felt her knuckles threatening to 257).,