ABSTRACT
In recent years, within the media and more generally there has been a burgeoning interest in various forms of body modification and management. Advertisements and television programmes about obesity, face lifts, breast implants, penile enlargements and other cosmetic surgery, sexual enhancement technologies (e.g. Viagra), anti-ageing creams, treatments for short stature, body decoration and body piercing, body building, and the like, lend the impression of a veritable market-place of ways to re-shape, improve or perfect the body. Biomedical treatments, including laser and new surgical techniques, which allow doctors to nip, tuck, and suck away unwanted fat and iron out wrinkles and accentuate parts of anatomy (e.g. silicone breast implants) have arguably contributed to an increasingly consumerist orientation to the body and health and to changing perceptions of the natural body. The body shape and beauty industries involving biomedical and pharmaceutical companies which have a global reach, governments, medical and public health authorities, and other groups, have no doubt fuelled much of this interest, with promises of creating more desirable bodies and transforming lives. While there is nothing especially new about some of the claims – advertisements for cosmetic surgery, including face lifts, nose reconstructions, tummy tucks, liposuction and hair transplants were widely requested by the end of the 1980s (Balsamo 1996: 63) – in the early twentyfirst century they have become all pervasive. A growing number of television programmes, magazine articles and Internet sites on body modification, involving ‘real stories’ of success (and sometimes failure), have helped to make widely accessible knowledge of such technologies and promote the view that potentially everyone can benefit.
