ABSTRACT
In this chapter I consider the experience of receiving facial treatment in the context of the beauty salon where, as Kafka describes, ‘the process of growing old and becoming dirty and wrinkled … [as] matter of negligence and fault’ (in Benthian 2002: 111), is being fought. That is, the contemporary beauty industry has taken the ephemeral nature of youthful skin into account and developed what it contends to be, a means of slowing down the ageing process with the use of cosmeceuticals. Considered to straddle the divide between drug and cosmetic, these are anti-ageing skin care products such as microdermabrasion kits, chemical peels, and serums, products that have disease fighting, or healing properties (Mukul et al. 2011). Resonating with the science of ‘regenerative medicine’, which claims to recharge cells, such products offer a space for ‘create[ing] a new set of social relations …’ (Hogle 2003: 62) and in so doing signals that ‘[l]ike Space, like Place, skin is never just one thing, nor does it make just one geography’ (Pile 2010: 38).
