Gracie Hall

            This week we looked at two different texts that dealt with the new beauty craze of plastic surgery. We began by looking at Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s Chapter “Normal Extremes” from her book Surgery Junkies; this chapter revolved around the reality T.V. trend of filming plastic surgery transformations. We are first introduced to the reality show Extreme Makeover that launched the shifting public discourse about cosmetic surgery with the first episode aired December 11, 2002. This show popularized the extreme surgical makeover, and coined the phrase. It portrayed “before” and “after” bodies that had been achieved by numerous cosmetic surgeries won through a competition.  Television, specifically Extreme Makeover is “responsible for some of cosmetic surgery’s recent market expansions” (40).

            Reality TV propagates information, social meanings, norms, and value through seemingly “real” people. These characters, because they are not fictional, are easy to sympathize and empathize with. However these people are filmed and edited in such a way that they soon embody written characters. Extreme Makeover, despite its reality TV status, is partially an exception because audiences are privy to real surgeries, real surgeons, and permanently changed bodies. These characters, however, are no different because each patient is shown with a simple short constructed story. Each patient is “presented as both transformed and restored”. First we meet Luke who is the determined and dedicated personal trainer that was born undeservingly fat. His proper body is supposed to be thin and his real identity employs a disciplined self. His new body shows his ‘true’ and ‘inner self’. Like Luke, Stephanie is a woman who’s inside self has been hidden. Inside a withered, mothers body her psyche suffers, however, after her surgery she rejoices, “it’s the new me”, and that she is now the person she always dreamt of.  Then there is Stacy who “too has a better, truer self waiting to come out”. The reality show portrays her as a woman who looks like a man, and therefore has a hard time attracting heterosexual attention. Extreme Makeover helps her start a new life and rebuild her prospects for love and happiness. Finally, there is Tess, a former beauty queen whose body has been ruined by birthing three children; she uses the show to reclaim her original beauty. Tess has the luxury of ethnic specialists, who make sure that her face stay “authentic” for her face: “Tess will regain what she once had, she will also retain her ethnic authenticity” (49).

            Pitts-Taylor explains Extreme Makeover’s notion that “you can look like your better self. You can embrace your existential possibilities that were stunted by an ugly body or a strained difficult life”.  Most patients are suffering from “psychological pain and ugliness or defect” and can be both healed and can achieve wellness through cosmetic medicine, they can come into their true selves and reach normalcy. Extreme Makeover has described the body as a “source of deep, life-wrecking, sometimes even disabling distress” and for some to reach good levels of self esteem, “cosmetic surgery is not a practice of indulgence, misrepresentation, or experimentalism, but rather one of self-care”. The article describes most Extreme Makeover patients as just wanting to be normal. Like the men with B.D.D in Pope, Phillips, and Olivardia’s “Beyond Muscle and Fat”, these patients seemed to be exhibiting a similar want of normalcy. Other narratives stress an entitlement instead of normalcy. Many women especially, claim that because they have been intertwined with the mundane problems of gendered domestic life, they deserve a rejuvenated body. In the real world, normally only money can help to achieve this type of “empowerment” (interesting idea of empowerment like in last week’s “Getting Your Body Back”). Extreme Makeover makes imagined bodies possibilities, by taking money out of the equation. This issue of money exposes a contradiction in Extreme Makeover’s logic: “on the one hand, cosmetic surgery is presented as a way of taking action and doing something for oneself, on the other hand, such a makeover is out of reach for most people” (54).

            In addition to money, another issue concerning cosmetic surgery is the pain and suffering that accompanies the process. Audiences are made (somewhat) aware that this is a part of it, but that the patients always deem it “worth it”. When interviewing patients Pitts-Taylor found that the show did not provide realistic images. One patient said, “you see someone for ten seconds saying it’s painful, but you don’t see it for ten days. For me the pain was numbing. I had intense pain for three days. I was black and blue for four weeks and six weeks later I still have a little bruising. It’s not realistic” (57). Extreme Makeover in its first three seasons gave each patient a Hollywood ending, while muting the negative aspects of cosmetic surgery.

            Another part of the show that had little coverage was the shows link to the American Society of Plastic Surgery. There was much conversation before the viewing of the show about the society’s ethics code and the endorsement of members’ participation. Some said, “[there are] potential ethical dilemmas that can arise from advertising those shows” (60). Surgeons’ differing views on all of this is fascinating. We hear in this article that there is a cosmetic surgery epidemic, unrealistic expectations, too many procedures, absurdities, distortion, and spin offs such as Nip/Tuck and I Want a Famous Face that give plastic surgery a bad name. All of these shows have changed society’s tone about cosmetic surgery.

            This article ends with the tale of Jeffery Cooper who shatters Extreme Makeover’s idea that surgery “pathologizes the body in order to claim the psychological wellness of its participants” (66). After his surgery, his compulsive over eating does not stop and he is not “cured”, and additionally the surgery produces family tensions. This episode shows that cosmetic surgery can be complex, difficult, and ambiguous. The other article we read, “The Poor Have the Right to be Beautiful; Cosmetic Surgery in Neoliberal Brazil” by Alexander Edmonds also focuses on plastic surgery, but in a whole different light. Instead of looking through the lens of American reality television, Edmonds takes an anthropological look at the cosmetic surgery practices in Brazil.

            In Brazil, most patients go to the hospitals for plastic surgery. One of these hospitals is funded in part by Catholic charities; where as most public hospitals are supported by federal or municipal budgets, which offer cosmetic surgery at no cost. In Brazil, “plastic surgery is not only for the rich. The poor have the right to be beautiful” (364). With all this free and widespread surgery Brazil has been named the empire of the scalpel for what they simply call plástica.

            The article opens with a contradictory statement “a shrinking state with a crumbling health system provides free plástica. A right to beauty is celebrated in a country where human rights are disparaged as ‘privileges for bandits’” (365). The rest of this article, however, spends its time rationalizing and disproving this contradiction. We are first asked why the demand for plastic surgery is rising in one of the most unequal societies in the world, our answer is as follows. These beauty practices offer a means to compete in a “neoliberal libidinal economy” and everyone is allowed positive self-esteem. The illness that is normally treated through plástica is self-esteem and poverty, by beautifying plástica serves as a therapeutic, psychological necessity. Plástica works better than a visit to a psychologist because it “cures everything by knowing nothing”; it is the “most effective therapy.” Common female patients can all be linked back to three related social trends in Brazil: “”the rise of the female employment, the feminization of the working class, and the growth in the service sector”.  Many women request surgery because of work/professional related issues. This article claims that plástica has been ‘democratized’ via the public health system and by the private sector. Now, “public hospitals and cheap private clinics can promise not only bodily change, but also the allure of First World modernity and glamour.” Most approach plástica as if “it will confer social mobility, erotic powers, or actual physiological rejuvenation”.

            Plástica has become almost a national symbol for Brazil, in addition to samba and soccer is one of the biggest clichés of the nation. Edmonds states, “In Brazil eroticized and aestheticized hybridity has been a key symbol in elaborations of national identity.” Racial democracies, meta-race, overarching brownness, all are pushed to a national beauty ideal of sensual large hips, thighs, and buttocks, and a narrow waist. National identity is created through this ideal and plástica, this radicalized beauty myths creates a demand for buttocks implants that normally go unrequested in the rest of the world. Brazils ‘continuum’ of race often allows for blame, and more requests for improvement. Edmonds states ultimately “Brazil has an aesthetic imaginary rooted in its particular history of racial mixing and nation-building that classifies and values appearance in distinct ways.” All of this incites demand.

            Demand is also generated by modern medicine, new expansive notions of health, and broad changes in sexual and social relationships. Women, specifically have been responding to these social generators, it is a feminine realm. Plástica is gendered because it is grandly associated with the female life cycle: puberty, pregnancy, breast-feeding and menopause. Women in Brazil (unlike contestants of Extreme Makeover) don’t just want to look normal but often sexier. Therefore, plástica is linked to procedures that manage reproductive health and sexuality; women have a “right to sex as well as the duty of sexual allure”. Plástica rates have been especially high with teenage girls because of this; however, it has also been growing with middle age women because they want to “remain competitive” sexually. Beauty has become the norm, and beauty has become capital.

            Body capitals include production, reproduction, work, and sex. Like we saw in last weeks article about pregnant bodies, Brazil claims that plástica is healing medicine that is meant to empower. Instead, however, it inserts bodies into the public market and becomes “infused with the frustrated desires of patients, the competitive logic of markets, the imagery of a nationalist beauty myth, and the medical and consumer fetishisms of popular culture”. Is it medicine? Or just another economic beauty market? One final suggestion Edmonds indicates is that (like in Extreme Makeover) beauty is hope: “when access to education is limited, the body—relative to the mind becomes a more important basis for identity as well as a source of power… beauty can influence the rich and powerful”. Beauty can change the world?

Sorry for the sloppiness of this post, I wanted to get it online before I lost power.