Exporting American Beauty: Plastic Surgery and the New Culture of Worldwide Acceptance
Jennifer Cognard-Black, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a member of the Ms. Magazine Committee of Scholars. Her work centers on issues of women and identity.
In the past few months, alongside grocery-store check-out aisles, inTouch magazine has proclaimed “Ashlee’s Had More Surgery!” while Star has revealed “Hollywood’s Secret Surgeries!” Despite the mock horror suggested by furtive procedures and exclamation points, plastic surgery isn’t really terrible or secret. It’s a happening thing. Reality TV confirms this trend. Producers of recent shows such as Extreme Makeover and I Want a Famous Face assume that consumers already desire cosmetic surgery or that their shows will ignite such desire. Coupled with the new, middle-class chic of Flaunt It parties, surgeon safaris, and plastic pageants, it’s apparent that the latest tyranny in the North American cult of beauty is the presentation of plastic surgery as a safe, egalitarian option for women (and some men) to better themselves. (Although some media sources contend that men are outstripping women as nip-tuck consumers, it just isn’t so. Last year in the US, 9 million procedures were performed on women—a 42 percent increase from 2000—and women exceed men almost 4 to 1 in opting for the surgical “fix.” In other words, plastic surgery is still a woman’s issue.)
Not only is elective surgery touted as an acceptable way for women to take control of their lives, but it’s becoming an expected rite of passage, akin to teenage braces or middle-age hair dye. It’s no surprise that Extreme Makeover has a Home Edition. Just as the home improver is encouraged to give her kitchen or bedroom a “face-lift” every few years, now she can subscribe to continuous bodily improvement as well, as long as she selects the right fix-it procedure for the right problem at the right age.
Such “self-improvement” surgeries are on the rise. Since 2000, Botox injections are up by 409 percent; buttock lifts by 267 percent; and upper-arm lifts a staggering 3,274 percent. Women are altering even the most minute areas of their bodies, from inner labia to earlobes to “bra fat.” A year ago, CBS reported on the “Sex and the City effect”: foot surgeries allowing women to squeeze their feet into pointy shoes by removing their pinky toes. And thanks to last fall’s FDA decision to re-approve the use of silicone breast implants after a 14-year ban, even more women will lay down the requisite $3,500 for boob jobs that carry a 30 to 50 percent chance of serious side effects, including loss of nipple sensitivity, painful breast swelling, and/or encapsulation, wherein the body attacks the implant as the foreign object that it is, encasing it in fibrous tissue. Encapsulation can only be reversed by painfully breaking up the hardened tissue or by removing the implants altogether, which sometimes involves chiseling them out from the patient’s chest wall.
Yet while it’s clear that increasing numbers of women are choosing plastic surgery as a cure-all for aging or low self-esteem, what’s less clear is how such surgeries offer the promise of individual beauty when they tend to erase bodily difference in favor of a single, American ideal. This new culture of permissive plastic promotes a world in which all women can look “American”—and this particular American idol, as E. Ann Kaplan has noted, is an icon that stands for the nation-state, one that is created and sustained by pop culture but that only exists in the realm of fantasy. While this iconic woman’s body might wear many colors of skin, the most popular surgical procedures show that it will have the following “American” look: large, firm breasts; a thin waist and boyish hips; curved buttocks; long legs; symmetrical toes; a double eyelid; a smooth brow; a perpetually surprised look; bee-stung lips; and a nose like a small, pinned butterfly.
Such a limited and limiting ideal also means that these cosmetic procedures work to erase ethnicity. Caucasian women are prone to wrinkles caused by sun damage, and according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, more and more are choosing brow lifts and Botox injections. When Connie Chung had eye surgery before her brief stint as an evening news anchor, she made a procedure that shapes Asian American eyes from ovals to orbs all the more acceptable, and its popularity continues to grow. In turn, more African Americans are having rhinoplasties to slim their noses, liposuction to diminish their waists and buttocks, and breast reductions to mold their cleavage into the standard shape and size, while Hispanic women are undergoing ever more breast augmentations to achieve the same outcome.
In fact, even though some plastic surgeons claim they suggest aesthetic “improvements” to women of color that are specifically geared to maintain ethnicity, the popularity and end result of the most fashionable procedures tell a different story. Regardless of a patient’s ethnicity, race, age, or nationality, women are being cut into clones. As Kim Gandy, the President of the National Organization of Women, points out, “The ‘standard’ created for Latina and African-American women’s bodies was established [in] much the same way that standards are created for women in the US and Asia—through music videos, magazines, television, and movies.” The inherent assertion of plastic surgery is that the body can be re-shaped into a single, American ideal that all women have the possibility—even the right—to achieve.
Of course, as Gandy suggests, this American ideal is also a global export.
Walk down any urban street in any major metropolis worldwide, and the thin, tall, buxom, small-nosed, round-eyed woman you will see on billboards and storefronts is both the motivation for and the promised result of plastic surgery. In South Korea, even for girls as young as fourteen, eye jobs are the rage. An incision is made above the eyes in order to create a double lid and a wide-eyed look. In Brazil, women purchase new buttocks with silicone implants that add volume and curve. In Japan, a nerve is severed behind women’s knees to “repair” what the Japanese call daikon-ashi, or radish-shaped calves. The muscles atrophy and reduce the calves to super-slim proportions. In China, women want to be taller. To this end, their shin bones are sawed through, metal braces are affixed, and as the shins heal, the bones are slowly and painfully stretched into longer legs. And in various countries throughout Africa, not only do female genital surgeries continue to occur—including the partial or full removal of external genitalia as part of cultural and religious rites—but some African women who keep their “American” vaginas are now modifying them to resemble those found in Playboy and Hustler (easily accessed via the Internet). They’re shortening their labia minora, reconstructing their hymens, and plumping up their labia majora with injections of fat or silicone.
These trends are more than just Global Editions of Extreme Makeover; they represent a tyranny of “American Beauty,” one that is designed, exported and sold as any other US commodity. As Gandy puts it, “the United States exports a variety of mass media products that reinforce the ‘beauty standards’ established by predominantly male-owned corporations. . . . [Even] the concept of a ‘standard’ is a US export.”
For years feminist theorists from Susan Bordo to Kathy Davis have disagreed on whether women who choose plastic surgery are “cultural dopes” or “embodied subjects.” On the one hand, Bordo and others have claimed that plastic surgery’s appeal to vanitus democratus is a form of coercion. The logic is simple: If there is a sole beauty ideal, and women are convinced that they can alleviate self-loathing through surgical means, then there is money to be made—and a lot of money at that. In 2005 in the US alone, plastic surgeons pocketed 9.5 billion—roughly the GNP of Angola. Even more, if women are kept busy worrying about their looks, as Susan Faludi pointed out a decade and a half ago, they won’t concern themselves with their communities, country or globe.
On the other hand, Kathy Davis and others have found that the stories women tell once they have undergone plastic surgery are almost always about empowerment. Patients feel more attractive, more self-assured. Provided the surgery is successful, to listen to one woman discuss her new, designer vagina isn’t all that different from listening to another talk about why she wanted to have female genital surgery as a girl. Both are no longer ashamed of their wayward body part and finally feel as though they are “normal”—as though they belong.
So it remains a complex combination of female initiation rites, peer pressure, peer support, sexual identity, and a belief that a woman can endlessly (and easily) “fix up” herself that motivates plastic surgery patients worldwide. This complexity begs the question of consent at the same moment when boundaries are being blurred between the acceptable and the unacceptable cosmetic cut. For just as strides are made, say, to end cutting in African countries or among immigrant populations in the US and Europe, the trend for vulva makeovers in Africa and elsewhere transforms a practice often discussed as “mutilation” into one that is desired, expected and deemed “okay.” As Simone Weil Davis has argued, “In the North American popular imagination, the public address of advertising is not understood as infringing upon our power of consent… Perhaps due to that presumption, beauty rituals hatched on Madison Avenue… do not bear the onus of ‘barbarism’ here, despite the social compulsions, psychological drives, and magical thinking that impel them.”
Accordingly, feminists against this new cult of permissive plastic must ask themselves hard questions. If a woman is grappling with a decision that is both demeaning yet desirable, just how much autonomy does she have in making her decision? Furthermore, in an era in which the feminist call to make the personal the political is co-opted, re-packaged and re-sold as empowerment consumerism—as a way to “fix-up” your body, your life, perhaps your very soul by adopting a fantasy of American Beauty—then how can feminists meaningfully resist plastic surgery?
Certainly feminist advocacy and activism around such surgeries must continue, but they also must change. US feminists can no longer assume that plastic procedures are a local phenomenon—nor take for granted that only Cher and rich housewives engage in elective surgeries. Rather, we must take into account the new, global culture of plastic acceptance and counteract the impression that surgery is safe or expected. We must recognize that the rhetoric of individual choice and personal expression is often used in the service of “consumer feminism.” We must be sensitive to the fact that women’s individual experience with plastic surgery may feel empowering and figure out how to critique the institution of elective surgery without bad-mouthing specific women and their choices. And, finally, we must resist buying into a invented American standard that collapses female beauty into a single, global ideal.
To these ends, may we continue to see on the covers of feminist magazines such as Ms. and Bitch (and, eventually, hopefully, others) women whose only secret is that they have decided to age with grace.
TAGS: 
extreme makeover, 
Connie Chung, 
I Want a Famous Face, 
Reality TV, 
Sex and the City
What a wonderfully written comprehesive article! I just keep wondering “when will it end?”. All these young women will be able to join the freak show when they are in their 50’s and 60’s as their silicone breasts will still be rock hard, their botoxed lips will be prepetually fish shaped… and the rest of their skin will all be naturally sagging to the south! What they are considering to be sexy now sure is not going to be so pretty in 30 to 40 years.
Comment by Pam — October 30, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Thank you for this article, Jennifer. I couldn’t imagine putting foreign objects in my body to “spruce up my chest” or cutting off a toe to squeeze into a perfect shoe, but obviously, that’s not too much for too many women. On a similar note, I mourn the loss of good celebrity role models as far as weight is concerned - what happened to the curvacious Scarlett Johanson; she’s shrunk away to nothing and has lost her appeal, in my opinion.
Comment by Robyn — October 30, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
Pam and Robyn–Thank you for responding to my piece. Not only are we bereft of role models for “full figured” celebrities (note that Angelina Jolie and Renée Zellweger have also become wish-bone thin of late), but we’re moving into an era in which the “enhanced” body will actually become the norm. Just as we now accept having one’s ear’s pierced as more “normal” than wearing clip earrings (or no earrings at all!), as more and more women across the globe attempt to “Americanize” themselves by hacking off their toes, putting plastic balloons into their chests, sawing through their shin bones, and freezing their foreheads, this look (alien, other, cyborgian) will actually be expected, will be the standard of feminine beauty. I worry so much for my daughter, who is eight years old and already frets over whether she is “beautiful” or not.
Comment by Jennifer C-B — October 30, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
Jennifer . . .
You article should be “must” reading for every high school health class. We live in an airbrushed/photo manipulated world where nothing in the real world is as it appears in the media. I fear the impression on very young minds is going to be irreversible - unless they understand the truth behind the image.
I shudder when I hear breast implants marketed just like cosmetics . . . Which, aren’t nearly as safe as presented. . . A friend works for a major cosmetic manufacturer. He told me of many barrels of chemicals from all over the world - identified only by number, but labeled “Toxic” or “Hazardous Waste” sitting in the warehouse. . . He said with amazement ” . . and women are putting this stuff on their face!”
But I digress.
I can’t imagine that any woman would willing submit to breast implant surgery if she knew the dangers that lay ahead. . . She might get lucky - and I hope she does! . . . But if she’s one of the many who get sick, that’s 100% of her life and something she will have to live with the rest of her life. She can’t expect sympathy from her doctors . . . They will most likely think she’s losing it mentally and send her to a psychiatrist! . . . If they give her medications, they’ll probably make her sicker!
I know, because I’ve been there. I had breast implants for sixteen years. By the time I had them removed, I couldn’t do the simplest job right, hurt all over, had major depression, and chemical sensitivity.
I had them removed thirteen years ago and, after much detoxing, am doing much better! . . . But, unless a woman make the link between her symptoms and her implants, finds the right doctors (Yahoo’s SalineSupport helps many women), and detoxes thoroughly she will likely continue getting sicker and sicker.
Is it any wonder an implanted woman is at greater risk of suicide?
Rogene
Comment by Rogene — October 30, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
We have only to look at Hollywood films from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s to see how we have created a homogenized standard of female beauty.
Dietrich, Garbo, Crawford, Hayworth, Harlow, Bette Davis, and all the rest — they were unique individuals. Today we have a slew of interchangeable lookalikes.
Today’s paradigm is: Bring on the Clones!
Comment by JoanZ. — October 31, 2007 @ 11:06 am
Rogene–You are so brave to have had your implants taken out; I commend you. You might be interested in an article that came out about a year ago correlating breast-implant recipents with suicide rates. It’s by Eric Nagourney and was published on Sept. 26, 2006 in the _New York Times_. In it, Nagourney writes, “Writing in _The American Journal of Epidemiology_, researchers said they had found no definitive evidence that implants contribute directly to mortality. But for some reason, suicide was more common among the women who had implants for cosmetic reasons. The findings came as the researchers were looking at the overall health effects of implants. The researchers, from the Université Laval Faculty of Medicine and the Public Health Agency of Canada, looked at what happened to almost 25,000 women who had implants from 1974 to 1989. During that time, 480 of the women died. When the researchers looked into the causes of death, they found that the women with implants had a suicide rate 73 percent higher than that of the general population.” A terrifying statistic.
Comment by Jennifer C-B — October 31, 2007 @ 11:07 am
But injecting botulism in my face is such a great idea!
Seriously, how do you go about transforming Barbieism as a symbol of empowerment in our consumer culture (If you want a new nose you certainly have the right to buy it!) to one of oppression without looking like a “feminazi” or “wacko” to those not like-minded, further stereotyping feminists?
Comment by Anne Walterich — October 31, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Anne, I think you do it by focusing on the health issue, at least in the case of breast implants. It’s major surgery, and the rate of complications is high (30% in first five years, and probably higher beyond that but the manufacturers have been very clever in avoiding doing the necessary research). None of it is paid for by insurance, and if something goes very, very wrong, women become bankrupt trying to pay for treatment and they don’t even have the right to litigation. In other words, women are kept ignorant of the risks in order that they continue to pay for a procedure that could ruin their lives. That’s oppression.
Comment by Gloria — October 31, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
It seems to me that looking like the “ideal” beauty, by whatever means necessary, IS ALREADY expected if women want to become the most successful and respected in most fields. I see brilliant scholars, executives, and newscasters giving into this cultural pressure to look like a pin-up in order to “really” get ahead. A “pretty” or “plastic clone” executive will earn more $, attention, promotions, fame, and respect than an equally skilled woman who chooses not to play the game. There are plenty of filthy rich and successful men who are “ugly” (by the media standard) - look at Donald Trump for heaven’s sake - but how many “unattractive” women are cultural icons of “success”? Not many. How a woman looks is still a huge determinant of how she is treated, no matter how smart or rich she is.
It is disgusting to me that misogynists have managed to manipulate the media, the professional world, and even the feminist movement in order to get what they want - blow up dolls to gawk at for their own pleasure. I mean, why look at Plain Jane with her small or droopy baby-feeder breasts (or big nose, full hips, etc) when you now have the choice to hire an equally educated/skilled woman who has chosen to get on board w/ looking how women “should” (i.e., how misogynistic men want them to). It used to be they had to settle for the stereotypically “ditzy blondes” if they wanted that type of porno-style eye candy. Now, thanks to all these intelligent and accomplished women giving into this trend, these control-freak men can have their cake and eat it too…..and smirk all the way to the bank, too.
We clearly are back to the days when small or saggy breasts are considered a “defect.” Ya, we’ve really “come a long way, baby.” Give me that cigarette, lipo, a boob job, and stiletto heels that kill my feet but look so so good to my male counterparts. Because no matter what a woman’s intellect, skill, or talent is, her success STILL depends strongly on how she LOOKS.
I made myself solemnly swear that I would never submit to this insidious pressure; no matter how damn ugly I feel, no matter how low my self esteem gets during a bad depression, no matter how many promotions I have to pass up, no matter if I have to accept that I will never be on tv (even as a professional journalist), I will not play this game. To me it is a haunting return to days gone past when so many women fought so hard to make things better for me. I will not disrespect their work and sacrifice by supporting this trend by calling it “empowering.”
Just because something makes you feel better or more confident does not make it empowering. If that were the case, then binge eating and taking drugs would be empowering. False empowerment is dangerous, not an asset.
…..Whew! Got that off my chest. Ahem….
Comment by Mary — November 1, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
Mary, you go girl!
But you know, sometimes I suspect that women need to take a little of the blame. Sure, we don’t put up enough of a fight. But on the other hand, very few of us are attracted to men who are less successful, less smart, less whatever than we are. Our instinct is still to huddle around the alpha male. And as a result, these days, as more women climb the ladder of success, the dating pool they are looking at shrinks the higher they climb since mates must be a few rungs higher than themselves, while for male climbers, their dating pools only get bigger.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if women want to be judged on more than our looks, then we have to judge men on more than their earning power. The more there are couples where the wife is the successful one, the more such women would be considered desirable, and the less society n general would value women on outward appearance.
Comment by Gloria — November 1, 2007 @ 10:10 pm
Gloria and Mary–The two of you have hit upon, I think, a central dilemma for feminists: on the one hand, we must (we must!) critique a capitalist, commercialized society that perpetuates an impossible ideal of beauty for women in order to keep women as lifelong beauty-product consumers and thereby undermine their credibility as professionals or intellectuals (as meaning-makers). On the other hand, even professional, intellectual women are often complicit in their own image oppression: because there is a kind of “power” in beauty, we feel the need to ascribe to its precepts. In my world of academe, if a male professor wears jeans or refuses to shave or shows up to teach in basketball gear, he still garners respect. If a female professor, however, “lets herself go” (doesn’t dye her hair, doesn’t wear make-up, isn’t rail thin), both students and colleagues don’t take her as seriously. Indeed, student evaluations of female professors’ classes often “go down” as such academics age, whereas male professors do not suffer the same decline in their class assessments until they are well into their late 50s. I wish I knew how to resolve this dilemma.
Comment by Jennifer C-B — November 2, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
Why would a black woman want to get rid of her hips, butt, and boobs or reduce them or whatever.
TO commit to white society beauty? Be happy that you have curves! I heard guys like that
Comment by diane — December 14, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
At least black guys do diane
Comment by jayla — December 14, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
Maybe it’s not everyday guys, black, white, red, purple, whatever… Someone once said to me that the feminine ideal is based on the preferences of the gay men in the fashion and entertainment industry… I thought that was a very interesting insight!
Comment by Gloria — December 14, 2007 @ 8:52 pm
Mervin…
I just wanted to write to say that you have a great site and a wonderful resource for all to share….
Trackback by Mervin — March 19, 2008 @ 12:30 pm