“Under the Knife and Proud of It:” * An Analysis of the Normalization of Cosmetic Surgery

Abstract

This article investigates a growing acceptance and approval of cosmetic surgery among Americans. An analysis of recent media coverage of cosmetic surgery reveals two dominant narrative frames that project favorable interpretations of cosmetic surgery. Several normalizing themes within these narrative frames are highlighted, including associations between cosmetic surgery and scienti c progress, technological innovation, and mental and physical health. Common portrayals of the body undergoing cosmetic surgery are also analyzed, with attention drawn to the ways in which these portrayals promote normalized understandings of cosmetic surgery. In the last sections of this article, the author suggests some potential consequences of the normalization of cosmetic surgery: virulent forms of social control, a disruption of mind-body re exivity, and a loss of the body's innate capacity for knowledge. KEY WORDS: cosmetic surgery, body, feminist theory, technology, normalization. As a child, I often dreamt of living among fembots. My entire family had become fembots except for me. Fembots, creatures in my favorite television series "The BionicWoman," 1 were exact external copies of human beings, down to every freckle, every scar, and yet, when you pulled at their faces, their skin would peel off to reveal whirring gears and motors -they were only machines, evil machines, that had replaced the unique humanness of each being. The Bionic Woman soon found a method of deciphering fembots from humans: fembots had, at the nape of their necks, a small egg-shaped nodule, easily concealed by clothing. In my dream I discovered that each of my family members had such a nodule and, with growing anxiety, I peeled back their faces one by one, nding myself alone amongst a sea of whirring gears.

Cleaning Up the Dirty Work: Professionalization and the Management of Stigma in the Cosmetic Surgery and Tattoo Industries

“…The events included here represent pivotal innovations in each field and changes in both industry practice and social norms. Furthermore, this analysis is predicated on two presuppositions: (1) that each industry began as a stigmatized and deviant field (Adams 2009a;Bradley 2000;Haiken 1997;Sullivan 2001) and (2) that there has been a change in the social perception, acceptance, and commercial viability of each industry (Adams 2009b;Brooks 2004;Kosut 2006;Sullivan 2001;Wicks and Grandy 2007). As such, this analysis shows how each industry has developed to achieve varying levels of mainstream success through the active management of stigma and professionalization.…”

A Test of the Agency Hypothesis in Women’s Cosmetic Surgery Usage

“…In a volunteer survey of American female college students, women who rated high in benevolent sexism (the idealization of traditional feminine roles) used more cosmetics (Franzoi 2001), and a comparative survey study of college women in Poland and the U.S. reported relationships between sexist beliefs, internalization of the thin body ideal, and body dissatisfaction (Forbes et al 2004). Other ideological influences like beauty magazines, movies and television programs depicting the thin female body ideal figured prominently in the narratives of the American cosmetic surgery recipients interviewed by Gagne and McGaughey (2002), and some theorize (Brooks 2006) (though do not test) that the growing normalization of cosmetic surgery in mainstream media sources may increasingly facilitate women's choice to pursue surgery. In quantitative studies, media influences predicted interest in, or approval of, cosmetic surgery among female college undergraduates in the northeastern U.S. (Delinsky 2005;Markey and Markey 2009), among middle-aged, married women in South Australia (Slevec and Tiggemann 2010) and media exposure mediated the likelihood of having cosmetic surgery in an Austrian community sample ).…”

Fine Lines: cosmetic advertising and the perception of ageing female beauty

“…Although there are no exact figures as to the number of treatments in Britain in any given year, figures are available for the United States where a total of 283,107 Botox TM injections were given in 2013, a rise of nearly 38,000 over 2012 with by far the greatest number being given to female patients and 84% of those procedures requested by women under the age of 35 (American Association of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 2014). Cosmetic surgery is no longer the preserve of the rich and famous, and where once it was something to be denied, it has become an acceptable, even normal, thing to have done to enhance appearance (Brooks 2004;Dingman et al 2012). It is also increasingly popular as a means of attempting to meet societal standards of beauty.…”

“…They go on to suggest that a critical element of body image for heterosexual women is the desire to create something which appeals to men. Authors appear divided as to whether the availability of cosmetic surgery and non-surgical procedures is having the effect of pushing women to conform to ideals of youth and beauty or whether the opposite is true in that achievement of these ideals is, in fact, empowering to women (Brooks 2004). These dichotomous views are cogently discussed by Ribeiro (2011) who, in a detailed historical discussion, stresses that women have never solely seen themselves as ''victims'' of ''male-fabricated judgements of appearance'' because they themselves are centrally involved in establishing ideals of beauty: ''women choose their clothes and their makeup, not with men in mind, but themselves'' (p. 329).…”