Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Bodies without Histories

2006; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 49 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08164640500470644

1465-3303

Margaret Gibson,

Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Feminist critiques generally focus on the relationship between women's bodies and the pressure to conform to fashion/market-driven images of femininity where women are measured, and come to measure themselves and others, against impossible ideals of embodiment (see Morgan 1991 Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. 1991. “Women and the knife: Cosmetic surgery and the colonization of women's bodies.”. Hypatia, 6(no. 3): 25–53. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Wolf 1991 Wolf, Naomi. 1991. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women, London: Vintage. [Google Scholar]; Bordo 1993 Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture and the body, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]; Balsamo 1996 Balsamo, Anna. 1996. Technologies of the gendered body, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]). In examining recent feminist literature on cosmetic surgery, Suzanne Fraser has concluded that many authors, particularly Wolf and Morgan, are caught in the textual bind where they inadvertently reinscribe the figure/fiction of a natural body as the ground from which to critique the technologically constructed body (2001 Fraser, Suzanne. 2001. “‘Woman-made women’: Mobilisation of nature in feminist accounts of cosmetic surgery.”. Hecate, 27(no. 2): 115–32. [Google Scholar], 117–25). 2. In quite a different sense, the maternal body is a figure and site of intracorporeal being and becoming. 3. See Balsamo (1996 Balsamo, Anna. 1996. Technologies of the gendered body, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]), Bordo (1993 Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture and the body, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]), Davis (1995 Davis, Kathy. 1995. Reshaping the female body: The dilemma of cosmetic surgery, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 2002 Davis, Kathy. 2002. “‘A dubious equality’: Men, women and cosmetic surgery.”. Body and Society, 8(no. 1): 49–65. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Gilman (1999 Gilman, Sander L. 1999. Making the body beautiful: A cultural history of aesthetic surgery, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Haiken (1997 Haiken, Elizabeth. 1997. Venus envy: A history of cosmetic surgery, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]), Featherstone (1991 Featherstone, Mike. 1991. “The body in consumer culture.”. In The body: Social process and cultural theory, Edited by: Featherstone, Mike, Hepworth, Mike and Turner, Bryan. London: Sage. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Franckenstein (1997 Franckenstein, Frauke. 1997. “Making up Cher: A media analysis of the politics of the female body.”. European Journal of Women's Studies, 4(no. 1): 7–22. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Morgan (1991 Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. 1991. “Women and the knife: Cosmetic surgery and the colonization of women's bodies.”. Hypatia, 6(no. 3): 25–53. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Pitts (2000 Pitts, Victoria. 2000. “Visibly queer: Body technologies and sexual politics.”. Sociological Quarterly, 41(no. 3): 443–53. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2003 Pitts, Victoria. 2003. In the flesh: The cultural politics of body modification, New York: Palgrave. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Negrin (2002 Negrin, Llewellyn. 2002. “Cosmetic surgery and the eclipse of identity.”. Body and Society, 8(no. 4): 21–42. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and Wolf (1991 Wolf, Naomi. 1991. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women, London: Vintage. [Google Scholar]). 4. I have been following this practice over the last 12 months in Australian womens’ magazines such as NW and Woman's Day. To take an example, the March 2004 issue of NW had the headline ‘Is Mel [Melanie Griffiths] Addicted to Plastic Surgery?’ On the same page were sub-headings ‘Kylies Botox Bum?’ and ‘Patrick's [Patrick Swayze] Smooth Look’. Various cosmetic surgeons also gave their expert opinions: ‘Leading surgeon Dr Meryn Cass believes Melanie has possibly had a full facelift or browlift, nose surgery and extensive laser resurfacing around her eyes.’ Commenting on Patrick Swayze, a Dr Dan Yami is quoted as saying: ‘His pulled-back face suggests a facelift … the change in eyebrows … is possibly due to a browlift.’ 5. In the film The Fifth Element (1997 The Fifth Element . 1997 . Dir. Luc Besson. Gaumont . [Google Scholar]) there is a humorous critique of a disjunction between biological age and appearance with a chronologically elderly woman appearing to be very young through the application of plastic surgeries. 6. Marge Piercy's novel Three Women describes this experience in a street scene where the elderly Beverly sees herself through the eyes of others, and on the mirror surfaces of shop windows: She had never gotten used to being old. When she would walk down Broadway she would half expect men to stare at her the way they always had, something about her walk, the way she carried herself, the sense of style she had been born with. She would catch sight of herself in the mirror and think, who is that old bat? Because inside seventy-two-year-old Beverly Blume was Beverly Blume, the same woman she had been since eighteen, full of energy and opinions and ready to laugh and ready to take a chance and clear-eyed about what was going on in the world. (2000 Pitts, Victoria. 2000. “Visibly queer: Body technologies and sexual politics.”. Sociological Quarterly, 41(no. 3): 443–53. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 26) 7. See, for example, Benjamin (1972 Benjamin, Walter. 1972. “A short history of photography.”. Screen: The Journal of the Society for Education in Film and Television, 13(no. 1): 5–25. [Google Scholar]), Sontag (1977 Sontag, Susan. 1977. On photography, New York: Picador. [Google Scholar]), and Barthes (1993 Barthes, Roland. 1993. Camera lucida, London: Vintage. [Google Scholar]). 8. In the US reality television program Extreme Makeover (ABC Network) the consultation scenes between the makeover patient and the cosmetic surgeon often show the use of computerised photographic images. 9. As the psychic (unconscious) mechanism of incorporation of abandoned object-cathexis, melancholia becomes the prior condition for mourning. It is only through an originary melancholic identification and incorporation of lost objects that the ego can be said to exist at all.