Evaluate the post-modern discourse concerning cosmetic surgery and the 'mask of aging' in Western societies.

In a world in which people are so often judged by how they look, the belief that we can change our appearance is in many ways, somewhat liberating. We all supposedly harbour internal norms of appearance and behave as if these are both fixed and accurate. To become someone else or to become a better version of ourselves in the eyes of the world is something we all desire. Whether this is achieved through ornaments such as jewellery or through the wide range of physical alterations from hairdressing to tattoos to body piercing, we respond to the demand of seeing and being seen. Such visual judgements are ubiquitous in western society, and perhaps even necessary, yet they also trap us, as seen in the past hundred years where we have increasingly turned to those whom it is believed can permanently alter the way we look to others – cosmetic surgeons.

Throughout the ages women in particular have undergone pain to attempt to conform to the current cultural ideals of beauty and youth. This is clear in relation to procedures such as foot binding and the wearing of restrictive corsets, where women suffered discomfort and immobility in the name of particular fashions. In recent decades, Western society have replaced these practices with strict diets and perhaps even more remarkably, cosmetic plastic surgery. The 1990s saw a significant increase in the numbers of women receiving cosmetic surgery in Britain and the United States, especially liposuction and breast augmentation procedures and today more and more women are turning to cosmetic surgery to change the shape and appearance of their bodies (Grogan: 1999: p.49).

Whilst plastic surgery is not a recent phenomenon, with a history tracing back to 1000 BC, where rhinoplasty was reportedly occurring in India, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that plastic surgery emerged as a means of aesthetic improvement of usually already healthy bodies (ibid). Namoi Wolf (1991) refers to the time in which cosmetic surgery became a mass phenomenon as the ‘surgical age’; where in such procedures account for approximately forty percent of plastic surgery, mostly performed on women who are dissatisfied with the way they look (Grogan et al: p.50), and where in 1989 one in every two hundred and twenty-five adults admitted to have undergone at least one form of elective cosmetic surgery (Morgan: 1998: p.330). In the face of a growing market and demand for surgical interventions on women’s bodies, the question remains as to why women choose to participate in anatomising and fetishising their bodies as they buy their new “contoured bodies”, “restored youth” and so-called “permanent beauty” (ibid: p.327).

Morgan suggests that in order to understand the discourse of cosmetic surgery better we need to look at it within a feminist framework (p.325).

REFERENCES

• Grogan, S. (1999) Body Image: Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and children. London and New York: Routledge
• Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth: how images of beauty are used against women, New York: William Morrow, as cited in Grogan, S. (1999) Body Image: Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and children. London and New York: Routledge
• Chapkis, W. (1986). Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance. Boston: South End Press
• Morgan, K.P. “Women and the Knife: cosmetic surgery and the colonisation of women’s bodies,” Hypatia, vol 6, no.3 (1991), pp.25-53 in Welton, Donn (ed.) (1998) Body and Flesh: a philosophical reader. Massachusets: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
• “Falling in love again” (1990) Toronto Star. July 23. as cited in Morgan, K.P. “Women and the Knife: cosmetic surgery and the colonisation of women’s bodies,” Hypatia, vol 6, no.3 (1991), pp.25-53 in Welton, Donn (ed.) (1998) Body and Flesh: a philosophical reader. Massachusets: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.