ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to gather together and represent the existing field while also starting new feminist dialogues about cosmetic surgery. It represents the philosophers, sociologists, film studies theorists, cultural studies theorists, anthropologists, and those working in medical humanities where landscapes of cosmetic surgery undergo rapid change. The book responds to the 'age of gender' in cosmetic surgery-the play between gender and chronology is intentional here-while and also illustrating general trajectory in feminist attitudes to bodies. It demonstrates how big picture analysis in which body-transforming practices are understood as top-down pressures on women to conform to patriarchal ideals is giving way to more fine-grained and multi-factoral analyses that are required to understand contemporary constraints and incitements. The book finds an early feminist literature that was quick to see women having cosmetic surgery as either vain social strivers, or as victims of patriarchal beauty system.
