Plastic Surgery and Females Desire toBecome Feminine

Sociology of the Body; 4405GAlanna HoweApril/7/14

Please provide comments, thank you!Introduction

“In the United States alone, since 1997 there has been

a 457 percent increase in the total number of cosmetic

surgery procedures” (Dolezal, 368). This quote proves that

the cosmetic surgery industry is booming with no signs of

slowing down anytime soon. However the differences between

men and woman’s experiences with the cosmetic surgery

industry have been studied for sometime now, and with good

reason. The percentage of women engaging in elective

cosmetic surgery to alter their bodies is enormous compared

to the significantly smaller number of men; in 2007 11.7

million cosmetic surgeries were performed, of this number 91

percent of these were performed on women, with men

comprising only 9 percent (Dolezal, 368). This paper will

work to better understand why the percentage of women

electing to have cosmetic surgery is much higher

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proportionately than the number of men.

This paper will argue using theories from Anthony

Elliott’s work, that celebrity culture has created a society

where public obsession with cosmetic surgery has caused a

widespread acceptance of it. Further, how public obsession

with celebrity bodies has created a field of knowledge and

set a norm for what it means for a female to be feminine.

Foucault’s notion of disciplinary power in the form of self-

surveillance will be employed to understand how this has led

women to feel they need to constantly monitor their bodies.

This has resulted in the success of the beauty industry as a

whole and more specifically the desire for cosmetic surgery

as a solution for women’s failure to embody the ‘ideal

feminine body.’

One of the hot topics surrounding elective cosmetic

surgery deals with public acceptance and normalization.

Many theorists have considered the question where did such

wide spread acceptance of cosmetic surgery originate from?

For one, the proliferation of new media has created very

specific norms for what the ideal female and male form

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should look like. An obvious way to achieve these types of

bodies is through cosmetic surgery. Western culture is

truly visual one; we are constantly bombarded with images of

celebrities, models, and athletes. These images are

plastered all over magazines, billboards, buses, the

internet and every other available space advertisers can

think of. The statistical increase in the number of people

electing to have cosmetic surgeries is proof of its wider

acceptance. Anecdotal evidence, as Dolezal discusses,

suggests that consumers are beginning to see cosmetic

surgery to be less of a medical procedure and more as a

beauty routine that should be part of a salon rather than a

hospital (Dolezal, 368). These kinds of ideas completely

negate the risks that cosmetic surgeries have, consumers

seem to only care about the anticipated benefits of the

surgeries rather than the risks or grueling recoveries that

accompany many of these procedures.

Popular and media culture have both played a large role

in shaping the public’s infatuation with celebrities and in

particular, their body parts and cosmetic surgery (Elliott,

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470). The public’s obsession with celebrity bodies and body

parts has created a situation where when people feel their

inner beauty doesn’t reflect their outside appearance they

experience a disconnect, this leads to the desire to modify

their outer appearance. This paper will focus in particular

on the concept of the desire females have to embody the

ideals of femininity, and how this relates to the higher

proportion of women who elect to have cosmetic surgery.

What this suggests is that Western society has normalized

the idea that when a woman’s outer appearance doesn’t

necessarily reflect the ‘feminine ideal’ cosmetic surgery

can remedy this.

Engulfed in Celebrity Culture

Firstly celebrity culture will be examined for its

influence over the public’s understandings of what females

have been told the embodiment of femininity looks like.

Secondly, how this translates into our image obsessed

society where superficiality is the norm.

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Celebrity culture has become a public obsession; new

media technologies have made the private lives of

celebrities into constant public spectacles that are

available for consumption. This has caused celebrities to

constantly change their image and seek artificially enhanced

beauty in order to shock and wow the public (Elliott, 464).

These new media technologies include, but are not limited to

things like, cameras, social media sites, and gossip

magazines, even things like surveillance of public places,

all work to reveal celebrities private lives to the public.

The celebrities personalities are no longer what the public

is interested in knowing about; rather it has become all

about the celebrity body and body parts. We see examples of

this in our everyday life, from discussing their body parts

to analyzing what cosmetic surgeries they have had done, if

they might need more to fix other parts of their body, even

critiquing celebrities who ‘really should get some work’,

have all become part of our media consumption habits

(Elliott, 470). Tabloid magazines feature exposes on

celebrities transformations through cosmetic surgery, and

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headlines like “My Butt Won’t Stop Growing: Kim Kardashian’s

Struggle with Weight” are plastered all over magazines with

accompanying images of her butt. This has created a new

facet of public knowledge, which people draw on to

understand how their bodies should look.

Elliott employs one of Foucault’s concepts, ‘the care

of the self’ which is, “The complex tacit or informal kinds

of knowledge which individuals deploy in devoting attention

to their own self conduct” (Elliott, 471). Elliott explains

how knowledge of celebrity culture is part of our world

today. This in turn is predominantly where women learn what

the ideals of femininity are and how they can embody them

through body modification practices such as, cosmetic

surgery. A 2001 survey conducted by BBC interviewed 3000

women and concluded that most women want plastic surgery, in

fact over two thirds of the women said they would elect to

have cosmetic surgery in order to achieve this ideal

feminine celebrity body (Elliott, 468). It is clear that

the individual body-parts are what matters most about any

celebrity, the same survey asked women to comprise what they

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thought the ideal female body should look like. “The

perfect female body comprised Liz Hurley’s bust, Elle

Macpherson’s legs, Jennifer Lopez’s bottom, Catherine Zeta

Jones’ face and Jennifer Anniston’s hair” (Elliott, 468).

This practice of slicing and dicing celebrity bodies, that

the public engages in to form the norm of the female body,

shows clearly how celebrity culture directly dictates what

the ideal female body not only should look like but how this

embodiment portrays femininity.

Elliott discusses how self-reinvention has become of

major importance in celebrity life; this has transcended

down into the public and created the popular ideology that

the way ones body looks is the most important facet of our

being. Ideologies are cultural beliefs, values and

attitudes that serve the purpose in any society of

justifying a particular way of life. Thus a popular

ideology means the widespread acceptance of an ideology.

Western societies visual culture has sparked an era of

superficiality, where the way we look has everything to do

with who we are. This is a concept that Heyes focuses on

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throughout her article, she explains that although we may

not believe it we are in an age where one’s exterior body is

assumed to reflect the contents of ones interior body

(Heyes, 18). She contends that there are four factors that

indicate that our exterior appearance has become the sole

way in which people conceive of themselves and others.

These include, the objectification of women’s bodies, diet

and exercise regimes, the beauty industry and the cosmetic

surgery industry (Heyes, 18).

What Does Femininity Mean?

Before we can understand what it means to be feminine

in our current society we first must make clear the

distinction between male and female as a sex and male and

female as a gender. As Judith Butler contends, ones

biological sex does not always match up with their gender.

However, in society these are assumed to be the same and are

expected to fall within the heterosexual norm. This

heterosexual norm explicitly states that males should be

masculine and females should be feminine, when this is not

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the case these people are punished. Butler touches on this

concept of punishment in society, she says,

“Gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. Discrete genders are park of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed we regularlypunish those who fail to do their gender right” (Butler, 420).

Gender norms are what produce this conception of a

‘real woman’ or femininity. This is because gender requires

the repeated performance of actions and bodily

representations that convey a particular gender to the

public (Butler, 420). Without these performances there

wouldn’t be two separate genders, these performances that

the female is expected to enact encompass exactly what

modern society has termed to be the norm for femininity.

Now we can better understand how the feminine body is

socially constructed and felt to be the crucial part of her

overall existence not only by her but society as a whole.

Bartky proposes that because our society confines people to

the strict binary of male and female, that for females being

feminine through the appropriate practices that define

femininity becomes crucial to her entire existence (Bartky,

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104). This means that females who do not follow the

socially appropriate rules of obtaining a feminine body

cannot feel that they truly exist as a legitimate person

within society.

The ‘Ideal Feminine Body’ as Understood Today

The ideal female body that is attributed to be the

embodiment of femininity mimics that of Barbie; smooth skin,

silky hair, large eyes, small nose, full lips, high cheek

bones, large breasts, small waist, fuller bottom, long and

slim legs. Images that convey this norm are plastered all

over the media and celebrities are constantly modifying

their body parts, in order to piece by piece achieve this

ideal. This trickles down to the rest of society and has

created a situation where women often tell plastic surgeons

to make their body parts look like a celebrities whom they

have deemed to be perfect. Angelina Jolie is mentioned in

Elliott’s article as a celebrity who people often attempt to

model their body parts after. “The part-objects they want

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copied about Angelina Jolie are her exaggerated, almost

cartoon like lips, eyes and check bones” (Elliott, 469).

There has been a shift historically from the ideal

feminine body, which was previously understood in terms of

her duties as a mother, her commitment to family life and

the importance of her work in the domestic sphere. Society

has shifted away from the conception that actions and

motherhood define what it means to be feminine to the

ideology that femininity is expressed through the physical

body alone. Our visual cultures obsession with body parts

and the punishment experienced for not conforming to the

ideal feminine body creates this desire for women to

transform their bodies. This feminine ideal that females

strive for is one that can only be realized through the

flesh, “Femininity is an artifice, an achievement, a mode of

enacting and reenacting gender norms which surface as so

many styles of the flesh” (Bartky, 95).

The female body is increasingly understood today in the

terms of sexuality and its presumed heterosexuality that can

be directly inferred from ones appearance (Bartky, 107).

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This underlines the assumption that females are heterosexual

and they want their bodies to reflect a sexualized version

of femininity. When women for example elect to portray a

masculine identity despite their biological sex being

female, society becomes uncomfortable and these people face

constant scrutiny. The concept of heteronormativity comes

into play in this relationship between females presumed

straightness and femininity that is expressed through their

bodies for the consumption of the male gaze.

Heteronormativity means the development of the norm in

society that heterosexuality is what the public not only

accepts but what is also expected.

The internalization of this feminine ideal is what

creates a situation where some women feel shame when they

fail to conform to the ideal feminine form. Internalization

is the process of knowledge becoming a part of the structure

of the self; the structure of the self is the ability to

perceive ones self and the knowledge that a person possesses

(Bartky, 104). This means the ability to understand ones

self as a distinct person who has worth in society, comes

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from the structure of the self. Our current structures of

self have internalized the feminine ideal, which is

expressed through embodiment of a feminine form, which in

turn is directly created through the knowledge of celebrity

bodies.

Bartky gives examples in her work that explicitly

show how at war women have become with their bodies in their

attempts to embody the feminine ideal. One woman said,

“I felt so terrible about the way I look that I cut of connection with my body. I operate from the neck up. I do not look in mirrors. I do not want to spend time buying clothes. I do not want to spend time with makeup because it’s painful for me to look at myself” (Bartky, 104).

This is just one woman’s struggles with her body, her

failure to modify her body to fit within the ideal for

femininity causes her and other women like her to be labeled

as having deviant bodies. The constant reinforcement of

gender identities can concurrently be found in the ever-

growing industry of the televisual makeover, which is what

we will look at next.

The Televisual Makeover

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Examples from popular television shows that follow the

transformations of people through cosmetic surgery

procedures such as Extreme Makeover, and The Swan, can be

used to better understand why it is females have developed

this need to embody the physical feminine ideal. This

desire drives them to engage in elective cosmetic surgery to

remedy what society has deemed as a deviant body. It is

clear in these types of television programs that the genders

roles and expectations of masculinity and femininity are

constantly being reinforced. She explains how shows like

these ones are quite explicit in their aims; the makeover

creates more feminine women, and more masculine men (Heyes,

21). An excerpt from Heyes article discuses the case of

Liane the masculine farmer who participated in Extreme

Makeover,

“A resident of Upton Wyoming, Liane is a strong woman who has been a tomboy most of her life and worked the land as a rancher, surviving the hardest elements. She finally wants to be feminine and feel like a beautiful woman” (Heyes, 21).

Experiences like Liane’s shed light of the very real

issue that women struggle with in terms of achieving their

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femininity. The lengths they will go to, to achieve a

desirable feminine body that is socially acceptable range

from daily beauty routines to dangerous cosmetic surgeries

that often are potentially life threatening. The Televisual

makeover culture has sparked theorists to consider, what

regimes of power operate on females that drive them to these

extreme lengths to obtain a socially acceptable feminine

body? This question will be explored in the next section

using Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power.

The Disciplinary Power that Inscribes the Importance of Femininity on Females

In modern society the expression of power is very

different from those in the past. Foucault argues in

Discipline and Punish that sovereign power, which was the

controlling form of power in society in the past, has been

overtaken by disciplinary power (Foucault, 136). Sovereign

power, refers to power that is expressed by a particular

authority that rules over the population; historically

sovereign power was the rule of the kings and queens

(Foucault, 136). Disciplinary power refers to specific

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techniques of management that are not necessarily rooted

within an individual in the society but rather methods that

control the population through a power source that is

unspecific (Foucault, 136). Disciplinary power often takes

the form of people exerting control over themselves.

The panopticon, which is a structure set up in prisons

to make inmates feel as though they are constantly being

watched creates this type of self-surveillance and

monitoring. The inmate’s feel they are constantly being

watched this leads to the development of their own self-

surveillance. This example can be used to draw on the

similarities of the type of self-surveillance people now

engage in with their bodies. Our bodies are constantly

visible; they are faced with public scrutiny everyday. This

is where the concept of image obsession comes into existence

in modern society. She explains how the woman who

constantly monitors her appearance each and every day has

become a self-policing subject (Bartky, 107).

Although this paper focuses on the experiences of

females and their struggles to embody the ideal for

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femininity, the struggles of men and their attempts to

embody masculinity should not be ignored. Although they

appear to be less prevalent in current society this does not

mean they should be discredited and labeled insignificant.

The issue of punishing people, who fall outside the

expected heteronormativity of gender and sex, as discussed

earlier in Butlers work can be connected here to Foucault’s

theory on disciplinary power. Those who fall outside the

heteronormativity conception of gender experience not only

discipline from others in the form of public embarrassment

but also discipline their own bodies in attempts to fit into

the norm. This can be referred to as ‘disciplining

difference’, this means females who fail to meet

heterosexual expectations and fail to embody the ideal

feminine form are disciplined solely on the basis of their

differences.

This disciplinary power that enforces the importance of

femininity on females is omnipresent, meaning it comes from

everywhere and everyone. Bartky explains, “The disciplinary

power that inscribes femininity on the female body is

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everywhere and it is nowhere, the disciplinarian is

everyone, yet no one in particular”(Bartky, 103). Reasons

behind females desire to embody a feminine ideal vary.

Reasons are often cited as intrinsic and believed to be part

of a larger psychological process of feeling discontent with

ones appearance. However many females want to appear

sexually desirable to the opposite sex. Popular media and

culture have stated that this can only occur when a female

possess these ideals of the feminine body.

Using Foucault’s theories of surveillance, Bartky also

suggests that within every female’s consciousness there is a

male judge. This male judge is constantly scrutinizing

their body, and takes the form of what she calls ‘the male

gaze’ (Bartky, 100). This leads to the conclusion that the

females electing in cosmetic surgery might do so in order to

obtain the ideal feminine body that is for the consumption

of the male gaze.

Although the disciplinary power that creates the desire

females have to embody the feminine ideal creates

disempowerment for women. This disempowerment occurs

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because they feel they must conform otherwise they will face

social stigma and guilt. However in a sense they also gain

a sense of mastery over their bodies (Bartky, 108). This

refers to the mastery that can come from honing skills in

the beautification process and well as the power to engage

in elective cosmetic surgery. This refers to the agency

that women feel they have over their image, however we

should keep in mind this agency is not available to all

women. Women of lower class often cannot afford these types

of surgeries and beauty products/regimes; this leaves them

trapped in what society views as deviant bodies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is clear that the proliferation of

celebrity culture in Western society has created a

widespread acceptance of cosmetic surgery. The shift in

what the general public cares about with respect to

celebrities, from their lives and personalities to their

body parts and the potential to reinvent their image, was a

crucial factor in the growth of the cosmetic surgery

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industry. The field of knowledge that has developed from

public obsession with celebrity culture and new media has

created a norm for the ideal female body that truly reflects

the heteronormativity standard of femininity. The desire of

females to embody the feminine ideal can be better

understood by applying Foucault’s theories of disciplinary

power and self-surveillance of bodies. This in turn leads

to the desire for modification of the body in hopes of

avoiding punishment or scrutiny that is faced by females who

do not fall inside the norm of what a feminine body looks

like. Cosmetic surgery has become a way for women to alter

their ‘unfeminine’ qualities, and thus remedying the

disconnect that is often experienced by women. This

disconnect is between being female and not only feminine,

but also heterosexual.

Bibliography

Bartky, Sandra, L. (1988). Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power. The Politics of Women's Bodies(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25-45.

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Butler, Judith. (1990). Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions. Gender Trouble, 7 (1): 416-422.

Dolezal, Luna. (2010). The (In)visible Body: Feminism, Phenomology, and the Case of Cosmetic Surgery. Hypatia, 25 (2): 357-375.

Elliot, Anthony. (2010). I Want to Look Like That!: CosmeticSurgery and Celebrity Culture, Cultural Sociology, 5(4): 463-477.

Heyes, Cressida, J. (2007). Cosmetic Surgery and the Televisual Makeover: A Foucauldian Feminist Reading. Feminist Media Studies, 7 (1): 17-32.

Foucault, Michel. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Random House, New York.

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