Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:23:30.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The (In)visible Body: Feminism, Phenomenology, and the Case of Cosmetic Surgery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Luna Dolezal
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper will examine the experience of and drive for bodily invisibility in women through the theoretical approaches of phenomenology and social constructionism. An examination of the social disruptions of bodily invisibility and the compulsive avoidance of such instances, particularly with respect to the fastidious maintenance of body comportment and appearance within the narrow parameters afforded by social norms, will lead to an exploration of the conflation of biomedicine with the beauty industry.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , Spring 2010 , pp. 357 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. 2007. 2007 statistics on cosmetic surgery . http://www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html#2007,highlights (accessed November 21, 2008).Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1998. Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. In The politics of women's bodies, ed. Weitz, Rose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–45.Google Scholar
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Blood, Sylvia K. 2005. Body work: The social construction of women's body image. East Sussex, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable weight: Feminism, western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1997. Twilight zones: The hidden life of cultural images from Plato to O.J. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Connell, John. 2006. Medical tourism: sea, sun, sand and … surgery. Medical Tourism 27:1093–100.Google Scholar
Davis, Kathy. 1995. Reshaping the female body: The dilemma of cosmetic surgery. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Davis, Kathy. 1999. “My body is my art”: Cosmetic surgery as feminist utopia. In Feminist theory and the body: A reader, ed. Janet, Price and Shildrick, Margrit. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 454–65.Google Scholar
Davis, Kathy. 2003. Dubious inequalities and embodied differences: Cultural studies on cosmetic surgery. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Department of Health Website. 2008. Cosmetic surgery . http://www.dh.gov.uk/cosmeticsurgery (accessed November 21, 2008).Google Scholar
Dobbin, Marika. 2008. Down Syndrome plastic surgery “child abuse.”The Age (March 11). http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/down‐syndrome‐plastic‐surgery‐abuse/2008/03/11/1205125862021.html (accessed July 15, 2009).Google Scholar
Epstein, Julia. 1995. Altered conditions: Disease, medicine, and storytelling. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. Ed. Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harverster.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fraser, Suzanne. 2003. The agent within: Agency repertoires in medical discourse on cosmetic surgery. Australian Feminist Studies 18 (40): 27–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Shaun. 2004. Lived body and environment. In Phenomenology: Critical concepts in philosophy, Vol. 2. ed. Dermot, Moran and Embree, Lester E.Oxford: Routledge, pp. 265–93.Google Scholar
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. 2004. Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. NWSA Journal 14 (3): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gimlin, Debra. 2006. The absent body project: Cosmetic surgery as a response to bodily dys‐appearance. Sociology 40 (4): 699–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1990. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Heyes, Cressida. 2007. Self‐transformations: Foucault, ethics, and normalized bodies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huss‐Ashmore, Rebecca. 2000. “The real me”: Therapeutic narrative in cosmetic surgery. Expedition 42 (3): 26–38.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy—second book. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaw, Eugenia. 1993. Medicalization of racial features: Asian‐American women and cosmetic surgery. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7 (1): 74–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leder, Drew. 1990. The absent body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lewandowicz, E., and Kruk‐Jeromin, J. 1995. The indications and plan of plastic operations in children with Down's Syndrome. Acta Chirurgiae Plasticae 37 (2): 40–4.Google ScholarPubMed
Lobban, Richard, ed. 1998. Middle Eastern women and the invisible economy. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
McNay, Lois. 1994. Foucault: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 2006. Phenomenology of perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. 1998. Women and the knife: Cosmetic surgery and the colonization of women's bodies. In The politics of women's bodies, ed. Weitz, Rose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 147–66.Google Scholar
Negrin, Llewellyn. 2002. Cosmetic surgery and the eclipse of identity. Body and Society 8 (4): 21–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Nelson, and Humphreys, Brian. 1984. Proportions of the aesthetic face (American academy of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery monongraph). New York: Thieme Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Pruzinsky, Thomas. 1993. Psychological factors in cosmetic surgery: Recent developments in patient care. Plastic Surgery Nursing 13 (2): 64–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, Keith. 2007. Liposuction. Rejuvenate 1 (Autumn): 8–12.Google Scholar
Schudson, Michael. 1984. Embarrassment and Erving Goffman's idea of human nature. Theory and Society 13 (5): 633–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shildrick, Margrit. 2002. Embodying the monster: Encounters with the vulnerable self. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Skeggs, Beverly. 2002. Ambivalent femininities. In Gender: A sociological reader, ed. Jackson, Stevi. London: Routledge, pp. 311–25.Google Scholar
Smith, Ali. 2005. The accidental. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Turner, Bryan. 1984. The body and society. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Van Den Berg, J.H. 1952. The human body and the significance of human movement: A phenomenological study. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 13 (2): 159–83.Google Scholar
Williams, Rachel. 2007. Cosmetic surgery and treatments set to hit £1bn a year. The Guardian (December 19): http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/19/consumerspending.consumeraffairs (accessed July 15, 2009).Google Scholar
Wouters, Cas. 2004. Changing regimes of manners and emotions: From disciplining to informalizing. In The sociology of Norbert Elias, ed. Loyal, Steven and Quilley, Stephen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris. 1998. Throwing like a girl. In Body and flesh: A philosophical reader, ed. Welton, Donn. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 259–73.Google Scholar