Women, appearance and cosmetic surgery

The progressive normalization of cosmetic surgery has alarmed feminist writers and social scientists alike. Consumer culture of late modernity has appropriated the body with a gaze steadfastly focused upon its appearance, preservation and health. Grooming industries, including cosmetic surgery, are major financial players in the global economy and, while men may be increasingly turning to surgeons to alter their appearance, women remain the most avid seekers of surgical alteration. Partly in consequence of women’s increased capacity for discretionary spending, the female body has become a profitable site from which global economies mine billions of dollars, creating in their wake industries dedicated to promoting the maintenance, grooming and enhancement of the body, the ideals of which are relentlessly reiterated and reaffirmed in visual imagery and mediated forms. Appealing to notions of self-preservation and emphasizing particular appearance ideals, society appears to reward women who approximate culturally constructed fantasies of the model body, while grooming industries extolling cosmetics, diets, exercise programmes, the latest ‘to die for’ fashion and, more recently, cosmetic surgery, have proliferated en masse to drive home a relentless message that there are consumable strategies for those who do not. Engaging women to survey and critically monitor their appearance in ways that persuade them to believe they need grooming products and services is the apparent lifeblood of the grooming industries. Moreover, it is an examination of how critical self-evaluation might evolve in the lives of women that is of interest to this study. This chapter considers the increasingly fraught relationship between women and their appearance, as it has been discussed in feminist literature and in relation to cosmetic surgery. Adornment, dress, fashion and ideals relating to beauty are evident in all

cultures and, during the course of our lives, we all participate in altering our appearance in some way or another. Both a necessity and a pastime, adornment can be viewed as creative expression and is often associated with considerable pleasure. As Seid (1994:9) notes, ‘How we choose to dress is a complex cultural phenomenon. Clothing and adornment are simultaneously a material object, a social signal, a ritual, and a form of art’. On an individual

level, self-presentation is a performative process in which we construct an interpretive frame of reference to convey our beliefs, attitudes and identity to others (Goffman 1971). All cultures establish rules around appearance and, by adhering to expected grooming codes, normative behaviour and social values are expressed, perpetuated and reinforced. Citing the voluptuous nude, visually evidenced in hundreds of years of artwork, Seid (1994:5) reminds us that Western ideals pertaining to female appearance had, until the 1960s, been relatively consistent. Just one hundred years ago the most highly desired feminine form was antithetical to her slender, muscled, contemporary ideal. She had a ‘silken layer’ or ‘stored-up force’ of fat which indicated good habits, self-discipline, a pleasing temperament and, significantly, robust health. Then the dimpled flesh today known and loathed as cellulite was considered beautiful. For unfortunate, thin women there was no recourse but to use inflatable rubber undergarments – complete with dimples – which were unreliable and prone to deflation at inopportune moments. Feminists, in particular, have sought to uncover the ways in which women’s

bodies are implicated in their oppression. Second-wave feminists were concerned with sexual and reproductive autonomy alongside broader gendered inequalities, but the more recent corporeal questions to occupy feminists have related to gender, identity and the body. The sexual liberation of the female body inaugurated a number of changes, not least the way women’s bodies came to be viewed in public life. Advertisers lost no time in selectively appropriating her newly liberated figure as an accessory to capitalism’s successes. Eroticized ‘ideals’ were swiftly juxtaposed to objects of desire in advertising and the subsequent impact on the body images of ordinary women and their daughters concerned both laity and feminists alike. At the forefront of feminist interest in the body was the attempt to explain why women undertake harmful practices to manipulate their appearances while seemingly becoming co-conspirators in the authorship of those same ideals which perpetuate their oppression (see for example Orbach 1978, Spitzack 1988, Bartky 1990, Young 1990, Wolf 1991, Smith 1993, Seid 1994, Bordo 1995, Davis 1995, Morgan 1995, Gillespie 1996, Fraser 2001, Covino 2004, Levy 2005, Martin 2007). By way of introducing and framing the issue of appearance dissatisfaction,

overwhelmingly observed in the current study, this chapter considers contributions made by Naomi Wolf (1991), historian Roberta Seid (1994) and the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz (1987) prior to examining the specific issues surrounding cosmetic surgery by reviewing two seminal pieces written by feminist writers Kathy Davis (1995) and Kathryn Pauly Morgan (1995), both of whom question women’s motivations to undergo cosmetic surgery but arrive at very different conclusions. Davis and Morgan were engaged because a comparison of their work underlines the ethical problem one confronts when undertaking to represent another, as in the event of qualitative research. Morgan claims to speak for women who undergo cosmetic surgery, but her footnotes reveal that she drew on secondary sources, whereas Davis spoke

directly to women who had taken that step. Morgan is deeply critical of women who use cosmetic surgery, while Davis found herself challenged by an apparent shortfall within feminist theory to explain the articulated despair of living in a despised body, a theme she identified as salient across her interviews. Heightened appearance dissatisfaction, through to the unequivocal loathing of appearance, quickly emerged as a prevailing theme in the current study and I similarly found myself struggling to find theory that could explain the undertaking of cosmetic surgery which did not denigrate or dismiss those who choose to enact it. Consequently, the ethical parameters drawn by Davis and Morgan relating to the contentious question of how one speaks for another, informed, guided and, in very real ways, provided the starting point for this study.