Jason Hawkins’ “All the Pretty Little Faces” was an intriguing fictional story about a girl who was granted the power to “change” her face. She desires to become more beautiful, knowing that it will bring her anything she ever wanted. I thought that the protagonist’s idea of beauty was strange but interesting - she thinks of it as a science and something that can be studied rather than what it really is, warping her opinions of the world around her.
The concept of the protagonist having access to literal faces that she could use was an extremely interesting idea that I thought Jason did a really great job executing. The girl trades her personality and mediocre looks for what she believes is scientifically “beautiful,” and doesn’t realize until the end of the story that she lost what made her attractive to others in the first place. I also thought that the way she treats beauty as an advantage reflected modern perceptions of what is deemed “beautiful.” The narrator says, “Only the last mask perfectly aligned with the formula to create, or at least create the illusion of, beauty. Everyone would love it. Everyone would love me and my pretty little face.” People are often more attracted to the idea and benefits of being beautiful to the point where they don’t see what they’re sacrificing for it, and I felt like “All the Pretty Little Faces” was an excellent example of it.