ABSTRACT

Women and other oppressed groups, such as some gay men, are cutting up in private and in public, in socially acceptable ways such as cosmetic surgery and in ways that are not yet accepted, such as branding. Practices of self-mutilation that do not fit the rules of beauty, in which young women mutilate themselves in private, are seen as a reason for concern and socially undesirable. This chapter examines and compare the cases of two women who have been severely mutilated by cosmetic surgery in the fields of pornography and of art. One, Lolo Ferrari, is a French porn icon whose pimp involved her in more and more extreme mutilations Art critics use postmodern language to justify the mutilation of Orlan as transgressive and even as 'feminism in action'. Starr had breast implants inserted in 1999 to make her more employable in the porn industry, as she had a family to support and needed to ensure she got work.