“Riveting and well-researched.... Graceful prose bolsters this fascinating account. This is essential reading for anyone interested in criminal rehabilitation.” —Publishers Weekly
“One surgeon's unconventional project provides the narrative spine for a fascinating, often shocking look inside the American prison system. Expertly and rigorously researched, Killer Looks takes the reader through the little-known practice of testing surgeries on prisoners, the rise and fall of the rehabilitation movement, the surprising economics of lookism, and the ingrained racism at the heart of all of it. Stone writes with compassion and authority. I won't soon forget this book.” – Mary Roach, New York Times-bestselling author of Grunt and Stiff, among others
“In Killer Looks, Zara Stone shines a Sing Sing-wattage searchlight on the relationship between ugliness and criminality, exploring how plastic surgery can help restore self-esteem to the men—and women—made ‘bitter, resentful, and antisocial’ by their appearance. She brilliantly flips the subject to investigate why the public would prefer higher recidivism to giving felons a ‘beauty bonus.’ Killer Looks, capturing the nuances of a seven-decade social experiment with convicts, is a tour de force.”
–Joan Kron, former beauty editor, Allure Magazine, director of Take My Nose… Please! and author of Lift: Wanting, Fearing and Having a Facelift.
“Through her engaging and insightful reporting, Zara Stone reveals a dark side of the history of plastic surgery. This thought-provoking read encourages us to examine the systemic problems of the criminal justice system that exist today.” – Dr. Sam P. Most, Chief, Division of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine
“Zara Stone has written a compelling, jaw-dropping book exploring one of the few unknown corners of our plastic surgery obsession – a program to fix the faces of prisoners in the hope of lowering their recidivism. The bigger question is what this decision reveals about our obsession with beauty and our fear of ugliness. A must-read.” —Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., author of Survival of the Prettiest, Harvard Medical School, Director, Program in Aesthetics and Well-Being, MGH Department of Psychiatry
“Despite our cultural focus on bias and discrimination, ‘lookism’ and ‘pretty privilege’ receive little attention. Yes, appearance matters in shamefully significant ways, especially severe defects. Killer Looks explores in an accessible narrative style the ‘dirty little secret’ of rehabilitative cosmetic surgery for criminals in the context of society’s preference for beauty. It’s an eye-opener, and essential reading in criminology.”
– Dr. Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology and author of Confession of a Serial Killer
Stone's exhaustively researched, eminently readable book examines the fairly recent, yet forgotten practice of offering plastic surgery to incarcerated criminals in hopes of reducing the likelihood of reoffending. Interwoven with ideas about how physical appearance and race might relate to sentencing and incarceration, Killer Looks offers a unique look at the criminal justice system, and how we can reform it.”
– Gary Brucato, Ph.D., Co-author of The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime
NetGalley Review: 5 stars
Last updated on 02 Jul 2021
"This book was great, there was clearly a lot of research done while writing the book. It was a great read, the subject was very interesting."
—Mariane Desjardins, reviewer and blogger
"Killer Looks is a stunning exploration of how our age-old obsession with beauty fueled research in America’s prisons that was focused on an appalling question: Is ugliness a root of crime? Zara Stone combines masterful reporting and vivid storytelling to take us into the early days of plastic surgery and a social experiment that still reverberates. She brings to life not only the inmates who received facelifts, nose jobs and tummy tucks in the name of that experiment, but also the corrections officials, judges and doctors looking for a new approach to recidivism. Along the way, it is all of us we see in the mirror, how we grew into a society that values physical beauty above all else." — Katherine Seligman, author of At the Edge of the Haight, winner of Barbara Kingsolver's PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
