The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery - part 1 pps

[...]... surgeons do They see the defect from the other side of the room The defect (or deformity, as they term it) hails them, flags them down, implores their assistance They see, in other words, the need for surgery They don’t recognize the daughter’s need to be sent home, surgery- free In part, this has to do with their construction of a particular kind of reality populated with bodies requiring correction The Patient’s... of our own kind Rather, such surgeries are the badges of parental success in the “new land.” A nose, a double lid—these dominant culture codes of beauty are etched into our bodies in token of our parents’ simultaneous submission to the dominant culture and accomplishment within it The entrance fee is the daughter’s rehabilitated body The Patient’s Body / 11 SURGERY It wasn’t until the morning of the. .. which are in the end interlinked The daughter successful in the marriage market, the ambitious son—these are familial achievements that raise parental value in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world The failed child is a sign of parental neglect of some kind They are clucked 10 / The Patient’s Body over by the parents’ circle Just as it may swell the mother’s own selfesteem to send into the world... men (particularly her philandering ex-husband), but it is ultimately her ideal image of her body that she pursues In other words, what women may want in the end is just beauty itself While the number of potential partners may increase, this is perhaps not the goal but rather the proof of beauty, the approving stares and the expensive gifts and the proposals simply registered on the checklist of beauty’s... love for them Nor does their need lie in the direction of loving, but of being loved Such women have the greatest fascination for men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since as a rule they are the most beautiful, but also because of a combination of psychological factors” (“On Narcissism” 89) The love object, then, is neither the partner nor the self (in any permanent sense) but instead the body... with) or surgical (the results of other surgeons’ work) or traumatic (car accidents, etc.); whatever might be the cause of the body’s appearance, it induces in the surgeon a form of rivalry This would explain the extraordinary level of in-fighting and competition among the surgeons, which include their readiness to “correct” the mistakes of other surgeons Indeed, open any plastic surgery journal or... at the end of the surgeon’s wand They will never admit as much to me—that it’s what we all want None of us is rational when it comes to surgery, no matter what we say to them, no matter what rational claims surgeons assert It won’t change your life, most of them tell me But of course it will, one way or another And indeed, at the same time as the The Patient’s Body / 5 surgeons offer me their professional... spent a great deal of time in their of ces, I am now hyperconscious of a general institutionalized distribution of power that has very little to do with the aesthetic particulars of each woman’s face and body Unless they asked, I rarely informed the surgeons that I have had surgery For one thing, I hardly wanted them to comment on the outcome or recommend further surgery I wanted them to interact and... Instead of obscuring your face, the bandages seem more like a blank field of possibility— of the beauty promised, of the happy ending to the surgical story This relationship between the male surgeon and the female patient is so powerful that more than twenty years later, as an interviewer, I found that surgeons continued to have the same effect on me Regardless of the professional career, the expertise, the. .. talk to the daughter about what she wants.” Some surgeons go on to say they won’t operate if the daughter says she doesn’t want the surgery But, in general, the surgeons have surprised me They’ve said the daughter wants the surgery, that’s why she’s there Even though her mother made the appointment, told her to get ready for the appointment, drove her to the appointment, and explained at length to the . rd 11 9 . b58 2003 617 .9�5— dc 21 200 215 4 915 Manufactured in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 10 987654 3 21 Th e paper used in this publication is both acid-free. surgeons do. They see the defect from the other side of the room. The defect (or deformity, as they term it) hails them, flags them down, implores their assistance. They see, in other words, the need. most of them tell me. But of course it will, one way or another. And indeed, at the same time as the The Patient’s Body /5 surgeons offer me their professional “truth,” in confidence they claim,