The ‘Art’ of Cosmetic Surgery: Medicine, Metaphor and Meaning

  • Suzanne Fraser
Chapter

Abstract

Medical, scientific and ‘popular medical’ literature on cosmetic surgery is overwhelming in volume. This chapter incorporates material drawn from books, medical journal papers, articles found in cosmetic surgery advertising and material intended to inform the public. The resulting corpus represents technical work in the area as well as material written by experts but intended for the public. I use this collection to identify and map the analytic repertoires traced in previous chapters; that is, nature, agency and vanity. This chapter seeks to address a set of questions also posed for the project as a whole: can shared terms and assumptions be identified across discourses which deal with cosmetic surgery? If so, what do those shared terms and assumptions mean for gender? The becomings of the biomedical imaginary body will be investigated through this material, as will any intertextual processes at work between medical, feminist and magazine discourse. I ask, how much do these quite different, sometimes conflicting discursive arenas share, and how does this relate to contemporary notions of gender?

Keywords

Cosmetic Surgery Breast Augmentation Breast Implant Medical Material Medical Discourse 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

  1. 1.
    See Kevin Smith (MD), ‘Rhinoplasty for African-Americans on the Rise’, The Crisis, vol. 101, no. 1, 1994, p. 14. Interestingly, 80 per cent of these patients undergoing rhinoplasty to modify the ‘ethnicity’ of the nose are women. Also see ‘Plastic Surgeons’ Ethnic Challenges’, USA Today, vol. 121–2, no. 2572, January 1993.Google Scholar
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Copyright information

© Suzanne Fraser 2003

Authors and Affiliations

  • Suzanne Fraser
    • 1
  1. 1.National Centre in HIV Social ResearchUniversity of New South WalesAustralia

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