Implanting Empowerment?: Cosmetic Surgery, Beauty Culture, and the Paradox of Choice
It’s hard to say why one person will have cosmetic surgery done and another won’t consider it, but generally I think people who go for surgery are more aggressive, they are the doers of the world. It’s like makeup. You see some women, who might be greatly improved by wearing makeup, but they’re, I don’t know, granola-heads or something, and they just refuse.
-- Dr. Ronald Levine, Director of Plastic Surgery Education at the University of Toronto and Vice-Chairman of the Plastic Surgery Section of the Ontario Medical Association; Toronto Star, February 1, 1990, “The Quest to be a Perfect 10”
We live in an image-obsessed society – one in which we spend more time watching television, playing video games or surfing the internet than ever before. Technology is our creed and we are perpetually seeking newer, faster and more unbelievable ways to control reality and the world in which we live. Our technological "advancements" have created a society in which almost anything is possible – and these possibilities for intervention in our lives have crossed the boundary of the corporeal into the flesh of millions of individuals, willing to put their bodies on the line for firmer mid-sections, perkier breasts and fewer wrinkles. But in this nexus of visual culture, where appearances are symbolic for the value of individuals and to be beautiful is to be "whole," there seems to be a disillusionment of what human agency is. For decades, feminists have fought for women’s rights to freedom and control over their bodies. Our foremothers have fought for liberation and feminists continue to work hard for women’s empowerment. Within this visual culture, many debates have been waged about women and girls’ body image issues and the pressures placed on women by the beauty industry.
However, somewhere along the line, the message has been mixed. Somehow we have gone from arguing for a deconstruction of the beauty standards set forth by the beauty and fashion industries, to fighting for the rights of women to choose whether or not to undergo cosmetic surgery. And why shouldn’t we, right? We want women to have full control over their bodies and by arguing so, wouldn’t it be hypocritical of us to say that cosmetic surgery is bad for those women who choose to use it, as a technological tool of self-advancement? Isn't it problematic to conceive of these women as having less agency – as being "dupes" of the beauty industry? Such is the paradox of choice – the debate that haunts feminists and body theorists alike. In matters of the flesh in a culture of somatic beauty– who holds the reins?
Those who sing cosmetic surgery's praises do so for two basic reasons. First, as already alluded to, the decision of whether or not to elect cosmetic surgery, in a culture that places so much emphasis on the visual capital and value of individuals, can allow women to exert power over their circumstances – to take control of the power they hold in a culture in which human value is based on beauty. This choice, because of the circumstances in which it is made, is one which has the potential to liberate a woman who has otherwise been marginalized because of her appearance, from the confines of her imperfections. Second, advocates also point to the psychosocial "benefits" of liberating women from their negative body image and the corresponding low self-esteem and depression that often result from a sense of inadequacy in a culture that measures women based on their standardized beauty.
However, while the merits of these arguments are clear, I can’t help but question if we’re kidding ourselves. Of course we have the choice of whether or not we get implants, or liposuction or a nose job. Nobody forces us onto the operating table, and surgeons certainly aren’t offering the procedures for free (according to plasticsurgerystatistics.ca, Canadians spent $665.4 million on cosmetic surgery in 2003). But much like Marx argued centuries ago – we make our own histories, but not under the circumstances of our own choosing.
Let's think about breast implants. What woman would choose to have her body hacked open and have foreign objects inserted, with the possibility of taking away erogenous pleasure of her breasts, limiting her ability to produce milk for her offspring and putting herself at great risk, if she didn't feel pressured to conform to an ideal "womanhood"? Free from the female ideal, from the media bombardment of "beautiful women" and from advertisements aimed to make us feel inadequate from the time we are old enough to blink our curly eyelashes, it is questionable whether or not such a choice would be made.
If we understand, as victims, women who "chose" to stay in abusive relationships out of fear of the consequences of leaving; shouldn't we also conceive of women who chose to undergo cosmetic surgery for fear of the consequences that being ugly affords in our culture, as victims too? Cosmetic surgery, in and of itself, can easily be conceived of as institutionalized violence against women, and we’re lining up en masse to have it done. Women have been forced into the box of femininity for so long that now we’re choosing to jump in - clinging to the chains that bind us…and we call this liberation?
Perhaps our late modern, neo-liberal obsession with choice has created a situation in which we have become blinded by the opportunity to choose. But, has feminism been reduced to a simple politics of individual choice? We still live in a world with a gender wage gap, the "double shift," and the "glass ceiling" – all political concepts put forth by feminists arguing for women’s equality and emancipation from the confines of their bodies and their relationship to heterosexual men. To me – liberation would be a world free from these inequalities. Empowerment would be standing up to the media moguls who make me feel fat, and ugly, and hairy and wrinkly and deformed (and that all of this is my fault and responsibility) and saying (ironically, in the words of Tyra Banks) “So What!?”
"Implanting Empowerment" is Ashley's first article for Edwards Magazine.
