Bogus to Bubbly

by Scott Westerfeld

  But don’t go measuring the height of your belly button just yet. Modern science doesn’t really support phi as the magic source of human beauty. Our brains are much more complicated than that. The way we see beauty has more to do with messy stuff like social history and evolution.

  But the Greeks’ ideas weren’t totally bogus. They were right on one important point: You can do math about beauty. Or to put it another way, there are mathematical similarities among the faces that most of us like. None of these findings are strong enough to be called a theory (which is the gold standard in science), but there are many solid hypotheses.

  Here are the ones I used when writing Uglies.

  THE SYMMETRY HYPOTHESIS

  Yeah, well, I happen to like my right side. Looks tougher.

  —SHAY

  In Uglies, when Shay and Tally are making morphos of themselves, they start by picking one side of their face, then folding it over. This is called “bilateral symmetry,” an exact match between the left and right sides of the face.

  The symmetry hypothesis is the strongest mathematical measure of beauty discovered so far. People from dozens of countries have been quizzed about computer-generated photos, and majorities everywhere prefer symmetry. Even babies stare longer at symmetrical faces than uneven ones, and this tendency seems to go beyond just us humans. Female zebra finches and swallows tend to choose males with symmetrical markings over those without. (And note that birds aren’t influenced by fashion magazines—they have no idea they’re supposed to be hot for symmetry.)

  So why is symmetry so popular? The answer is simple: It indicates a strong immune system. Being sick when you’re a littlie knocks the growing process out of whack, and your features wind up slightly uneven. And evolution wants us to find mates who’ve been healthy their whole lives. We also don’t want to hang out with people who might sneeze and make us sick.

  Of course, illness happens to all of us; no one in human history ever grew up completely perfect and symmetrical. But somewhere deep in our brains, a lot of us are looking for that morpho that Tally and Shay made—a perfect balance of left and right.

  THE AVERAGING HYPOTHESIS

  When we say someone has “average looks,” that’s usually not a good thing. But the math says otherwise.

  In 1994, researchers in Scotland used software to “average” dozens of female faces. The computers blended real faces together, creating mathematical composites of their features. When they tested the results, most people found the averaged faces prettier than the originals.

  Since then, studies in several countries have backed up the averaging hypothesis. And the more faces that are added to the mix, the prettier the averaged faces become. But why would averageness be desirable?

  One explanation is that we’re all looking for a mix of features in our mates. That is, we want someone who has genes from all parts of the gene pool. Such people would presumably have a wider collection of inherited traits—in other words, useful stuff that we want our own children to have.

  An intriguing part of this research is that when people look for beauty, they seem to average their entire community. All the faces they see go into the mix. Back when humans lived in tiny villages, that meant only a few hundred people. But these days, we see images of faces from all over the world.

  FAQ 1: Does everyone look the same in Tally’s city?

  Answer: No. There are parameters to keep everyone within certain limits, but you can still tell people apart.

  FAQ 2:Is there racial variation in Tally’s world?

  Answer: Yes. Each city has its own averaging group, so a city in Asia, like Aya’s, would have predominantly Asian features in the mix. Tally’s city is on the Pacific coast of North America, so the mix would include Hispanic, African, Asian, and Anglo groups.

  THE NEOTENY HYPOTHESIS

  Throughout most of history, people didn’t live very long.

  Our Neanderthal ancestors only lived to be about twenty. A thousand years ago, the average person made it to thirty. And even a century ago, life expectancy wasn’t much more than forty, just over half of what it is now.

  This leads to a disturbing fact: For the majority of our evolutionary history, it has been a really stupid idea to start a family with someone who was over the age of twenty. Because, not too long ago, that was really old, so your mate wouldn’t be around long enough to help you raise your kids. Bad move.

  But thanks to social and technological changes, these days it’s the other way around—it’s a crazy idea to start a family with anyone under twenty. Young people rarely have the resources, education, or experience needed to raise kids. This conflict between evolutionary programming and social reality causes many of the conflicts of being a modern-day teenager. (But that’s another book. Um, make that ten books.)

  This mixed-up situation also leads to the neoteny hypothesis: After age twenty or so, looking younger makes you more attractive.

  To reiterate: Our mental wiring hasn’t caught up with present-day reality. We think that everyone should look twenty, because for eons that was middle age.

  So what does “young” look like? Well, that’s easy to figure out from the tricks we use to make ourselves beautiful. Most of them are related to neoteny.

  Full Lips

  From age twenty-five or so, the body loses collagen, which is the stuff that makes your lips plump. Lipstick and lip gloss make the lips look bigger. And cosmetic surgeons, of course, will inject collagen into your lips, making them genuinely bigger (and kind of weird-looking, if you ask me).

  Full and Lustrous Hair

  As you get older, your hair gets thinner (mine does, anyway) and less shiny. Hair extensions, hair growth stimulants and procedures, as well as endless hair products are all used to manipulate your hair back to its youthful fullness and luster.

  Big Eyes

  Our eyeballs grow faster than the rest of us, so young people’s eyes are big in comparison to the rest of their bodies. That’s why eyeliner and false eyelashes make us look younger. No one’s figured out yet how to make eyes actually bigger, but the surgery in Tally’s world does exactly that. (Especially for manga-heads!)

  Clear and Smooth Skin

  Obviously, being a teenager is no picnic when it comes to your skin. But by age twenty, most people have clear, unwrinkled skin. Tricks like concealer, chemical peels, and face-lifts all help to keep it looking that way.

  In Tally’s world, these markers of youth are present in every new pretty. The operation makes them into exaggerated-looking twenty-year-olds, and keeps them that way for as long as possible. It’s not until they start having kids (at about age fifty in Tally’s city) that the middle-pretty operation gives them gray hair and a few wrinkles to make them look wise.

  FAQ: Why aren’t littlies ugly?

  Answer: Another feature of neoteny is that we’re programmed to protect little kids. So littlies aren’t considered ugly in Tally’s world—they’re too cute and innocent and small. Like penguins.

  THE EXPOSURE EFFECT

  Way back in 1968, a social scientist named Robert Zajonc discovered the “exposure effect.” Basically, we’re all attracted to things that we recognize: a comfortable old T-shirt, a familiar brand of toothpaste, an actor we’ve seen in a dozen movies. We like what we already know.

  This effect also extends to human desire. If someone looks like an old friend of ours, we’re more likely to find him or her attractive. And if a person resembles the classic beauties of our culture, we’re preprogrammed to believe that they too must be beautiful. In this way, beauty is cultural. That is, people who are considered beautiful in one country may not be considered so in another.

  Of course, in Tally’s world everyone is familiar. The Pretty Committee sets a very narrow range for the operation, so no one looks strange or disturbing. That’s one of the reasons why pretties like and trust one another: Nobody seems like an outsider (except, of course, those annoying little uglies).

  In Aya’s city the e
xposure effect is even more important. The “big faces” are the people who are the most familiar, because they’re on the feeds all the time. As Aya thinks one morning:

  People’s faces were so different since the mind-rain, the new fads and cliques and inventions so unpredictable. It made the city sense-missing sometimes. Famous people were the cure for that randomness, like pre-Rusties gathering around their campfires every night, listening to the elders. Humans needed big faces around for comfort and familiarity, even an ego-kicker like Nana Love just talking about what she’d had for breakfast.

  The exposure effect is also good news for those of us who weren’t born gorgeous. It means that the people who know us best—our parents and children, our best friends and true loves—ultimately “forget” what we look like. How symmetrical or clear-skinned we are disappears into the experiences we’ve shared with someone. After a certain point, it’s just like David said to Tally: “What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.”

  THE HALO EFFECT

  One of the worst things about focusing on looks is the “halo effect,” the tendency to think that pretty people are better than the rest of us. Studies show that attractive people have more friends, get better grades, and make more money. A recent study even suggested that kids who are prettier at age fifteen are less likely to get in serious trouble by the time they’re eighteen.

  The halo effect invokes a lot of tricky questions: Are people successful because they’re pretty? Or do they become pretty because they’re successful? Did those pretty kids act up and get away with stuff because of their looks? Or do people who aren’t pretty get treated badly, and strike back in ways that get them into trouble?

  These are all tough questions. You can almost see why a society like Tally’s would finally throw up their hands and say, “Forget it! Let’s just make everyone pretty!” They extended the halo effect to everyone, in hopes of a better world.

  Clearly they were wrong to make everyone bubbleheaded, but you have to admit that Tally’s culture understood one thing: A world in which people treat one another with attention and respect is one with more success, less crime, and more happiness.

  THE GOOD NEWS

  We’re not freaks, Tally. We’re normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we’re not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

  —SHAY

  One thing you should remember about all this stuff: These hypotheses are about what most people are attracted to. There is no “ideal beauty,” no single look that everyone in the world loves.

  Actually, the thing that Americans obsess about the most—weight—varies widely as a beauty marker. Different cultures find people of different sizes sexy. Even U.S. culture had very different standards of skinniness just a few decades ago. My guess is that the people in Tally’s era would find a lot of our current-day movie stars freakishly thin and unhealthy-looking.

  And here’s another cool discovery: Scientists have found that humans vary as “seers” of beauty. Some people hardly react at all when they see a beautiful face. Like David, they’re focused on other things besides looks. (There’s actually some evidence that men with high testosterone levels are the biggest suckers for a pretty face, but that seems just too obvious to be true.)

  Another important point is that almost all beauty studies use photographs. In other words, these “beauties” weren’t talking or even moving. I don’t know about you, but I’m usually talking or moving when I get to know someone. And yet we have very little scientific data about how personality compares to beauty when it comes to attraction. My guess is that for anyone really worth knowing, what you look like comes in a distant second to a good sense of humor.

  And here’s one last piece of good news I discovered when researching the averaging hypothesis: There’s a difference between pretty and gorgeous. People may find averaged faces attractive as a whole, but the most beautiful faces tend to be non-average in some way. So looking weird can be a whole other kind of attractive that’s hard to pin down with statistics.

  That’s why I quoted Francis Bacon in Part II of Uglies: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

  And that also brings me to a secret never revealed in the books: Another reason for the operation was to get rid of the truly beautiful people by burying them in a sea of pretty sameness.

  GADGETS AND INVENTIONS

  I get asked a lot where the futuristic inventions in Uglies come from. How did I get all these crazy ideas? Well, I mostly didn’t. Only a few of Tally’s gadgets are original to me. Most have a long history in science fiction, and a couple already exist in the here and now. Just so you know which is which, here are a few notes explaining where these gadgets come from and, more important, how likely they are to be a part of your future.

  COMMUNICATIONS

  Hi, ping-la!

  —TALLY

  The City Interface

  The city interface is more or less what we call the Internet—a repository of information available to anyone at any time, and a communication hub for people throughout the world. The main difference is that in Tally’s world, the city authorities use the interface to closely watch their citizens. Especially those who are trying to change the system. Actually, this part of Tally’s world is slowly coming true in our own world, though the issues of privacy are still being hashed out in the courts. Probably, your generation will be the one to decide whether the “security” of having a government that knows everything about everyone is worth having no privacy.

  Interface Ring

  Having an interface device is so important in Tally’s world, I figured that a ring would make the most sense. It’s the easiest accessory to wear and the hardest to lose. Also, a lot of the things the city interface does for Tally—bringing food, opening doors—seem like magic to us. Since rings are associated with magic, I figured that an interface ring would feel right to a present-day reader. Ring-size cell phones are probably not too far away in our world.

  Interface Bracelet

  Of course, escaping the city interface is fairly easy for most people in Tally’s city: You just take off your ring. This was fine for most pretties, who wouldn’t think of being miscreants. But when Zane and Tally started causing trouble, I figured the city would have to have a way to keep track of them permanently. I decided on an interface bracelet that could not be removed. One main reason: “Bracelets” is slang for handcuffs.

  Skintenna

  I partly invented skintennas because it’s fun to say “skintenna.” I also liked the idea that the Specials were a tight-knit tribe who could hear one another’s breathing and were all listening to the same music all the time. The music idea came from reading about a nightclub in London where everyone wears radio headphones. All the headphones play the same music, so it seems like a normal nightclub until you take off your headphones, and see everyone dancing to . . . silence. That struck me as kind of futuristic and a bit uncanny, which is how I wanted the Specials to seem.

  Eyescreen

  My dentist gives me these eyeglasses that have little screens in them, so I can watch a movie while he works on me. It’s very weird, like the movie is hovering right in front of me. I figured the media-obsessed people of Aya’s city wouldn’t want to ever stop watching the feeds, so eyescreens would be totally necessary. Researchers at the University of Washington have already made an eyescreen prototype, but it doesn’t show video yet, just simple information on an LED screen. Aya’s eyescreen doesn’t use glasses or contact lenses—the device is placed inside her eyeballs with surgery. It feeds data from the city interface directly into her optic nerve and coordinates with other devices in her ears (to add audio data), jaw (for voice commands and speech communication), and fingers (for gestural control).

  Tracker Locket

  The tracker that Tally takes to the Smoke could have looked like anything, but a locket seemed the most dramatic to me. Usually lockets carry pictures of loved ones, so Tally’s makes everyone assume that s
he has a boyfriend back in the city. But in fact the locket symbolizes someone she hates—Dr. Cable—and she winds up hurting David with it. Ah, delicious irony.

  HOVERING STUFF

  All that glitters is not hovery.

  —SHAY

  Note: For the science of hovering and mag-lev trains, see “Magnetic Levitation.” For hoverboards, see “Hover-board Manual.”

  Hovercar

  The hovercar concept is an old one in science fiction. (The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word back to 1960.) I figured Tally’s world needed hovercars, because middle pretties would never use boards. Cars are much easier to fly, they keep you out of the weather, and there’s room for your littlies. New pretties would probably use hovercars too, because they’re too simple-minded to use hoverboards. But then again, they never leave New Pretty Town!

  Hovercars have actually existed in our world for decades now, but they use lifting rotors instead of magnetic levitation. (See “Science #2: Magnetic Levitation” to learn why.)

  Bungee Jacket

  Pretties are always doing stupid things, but Tally’s society is obsessed with safety, so I figured that they’d need a lot of bungee jackets around to keep pretties from getting hurt. More important, bungee jackets allow my heroes to jump off tall things and not die, which is very useful for an author.