ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the feminist critics of cosmetic surgery cannot afford the comforts of alleviating unbearable suffering position. It embraces the uneasiness about women's involvement in cosmetic surgery. The chapter explores what makes it both fervently desired by and yet invariably problematic for women. If feminists had reason to be skeptical of the more mundane practices of the beauty system, they were even more critical of cosmetic surgery, which was unanimously regarded as not only dangerous to women's health, but demeaning and disempowering. Cosmetic surgery was regarded as-literally-a way to 'cut women down to size'. The chapter assumes that the specific particularities of women's embodied experiences should be the starting point for understanding why women alter their bodies surgically as well as for a critical exploration of the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that enable and constrain their decisions to embark upon the 'surgical fix'.
