Number 12 Looks Just Like You story
In a future society, a young woman resists having the surgery that her society requires to make everyone beautiful and identical. Directed by: Abner Biberman. Story by: Charles Beaumont and John Tomerlin.
15 total · 2 choice · 7 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| conformism in society | choice | Marilyn suspected that despite not being legally required, the Transformation was not optional, and was being maintained by the leaders of society to ensure conformity. |
| conformist dystopia | choice | The society in this story made everybody the same by making everyone very physically attractive. |
| appearance altering technology | major | The story is set in a future where people had their bodies surgically altered to look identical to one out of a set of physically attractive models. |
| father and daughter | major | Marilyn explained many times how her relationship with her father had been. |
| filial love | major | Marilyn explained her love for her late father. |
| mother and daughter | major | Lana was worried about her nineteen-year-old daughter Marilyn because she was reluctant undergo an appearance altering surgery. |
| the desire to be beautiful | major | Everyone wanted to be beautiful except for Marilyn who was content to look average. |
| totalitarian dystopia | major | The society featured in this story exhibited several totalitarian elements: some literary classics had been banned, it was important that everyone looked the same, and a form pf psychological coercion was used to manipulate youths into undergoing appearance altering surgeries. |
| what is beauty | major | Marilyn remarked that without ugliness there would be no beauty. Marilyn explained to Dr. Sigmund that Dostoevsky was ugly but wrote of beauty, and her father had said that if everyone is beautiful then no one is. |
| drugged up dystopia | minor | There was a drug called "instant smile" which worked as a cure for philosophical brooding. |