TELEVISION AND THE DOMESTICATION OF COSMETIC SURGERY

ARTICLE BY- Sue Tait

INTRODUCTION:

Today, there are a number of reality series on television which make over “ordinary” people.
Two such US produced shows are Extreme Makeover and Nip/Tuck. Extreme Makeover aired
from 2002 to 2005 was the most successful of television’s surgical reality shows and Nip/Tuck
which was on air from 2003 was the first drama series about cosmetic surgery.

This article by Sue Tait throws light on how cosmetic surgery advertised in television shows have
played a major role in changing the thinking of women. There are celebrities out there on
television, having had a number of cosmetic surgeries to their “imperfect” body part, who
influence viewers thinking to a great extent. Feminists believe that women now think that a
physical transformation is the route to happiness and personal empowerment.

These television programmes domesticate cosmetic surgery by advertizing its positive effects
and showing how these surgeries can change one’s unaesthetic looks into an appealing
character. People who are not interested in altering their imperfect body parts are also pulled
into this industry.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer’s work (2006, page 257) on surgical reality television
identifies post-feminism as the logic which shows “where a celebration of the body, the
pleasure of transformation, and individual empowerment function as a justification for a
renewed objectification of female bodies.”

According to researches by Jeffreys, Morgan, Sullivan and Wolf, cosmetic surgery is dangerous

Many scholars like Bordo, Davis, Gagne & McGaughey, Gillespie, Padmore and Woodstock
examine the desire for surgery and the natural contradiction that giving in to hegemonic
standards of beauty enables the experience of liberation.

Davis argues that cosmetic surgery is not about subscribing to popular standards of beauty, but
about performing a more coherent identity. It is about exercising power under conditions that
are not of one’s own making.
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) and the American Society for Plastic
Surgeons (ASPS) in 2005 released Press statements linking the rise in surgical procedures
performed in 2004 to the trend in cosmetic surgery reality television.

McRobbie (2004, pg 255) refers to post-feminism as the ways in which the gains of second
wave feminism are actively undermined or “undone” through popular representations which
render feminism’s agenda’s as achieved and thus exhausted like films, the press, advertising
etc.

According to Hopkins Tanne, the show Nip/Tuck which is about two philandering male surgeons
has been condemned by the ASAPS and the ASPS.

Spitzack (1988, ph 40) finds it difficult to criticize cosmetic surgery as its practices are seen an
“elective and empowering” and it demonstrates a desire for self love.

HYPOTHESIS:

This article explores how television shows like Extreme Makeover and Nip/Tuck add to and
reflect the process through which cosmetic surgery has become domesticated within escalating
universal contexts. It also shows how people today are increasingly going in for cosmetic
surgeries, and are happier doing it. It also analyses how Extreme Makeover impresses and
controls the surgical body, and how Nip/Tuck’s description of surgical culture attempts to upset
the existing cultural comfort with cosmetic appearance.

FEMINIST FRAMING OF COSMETIC SURGERY:

Feminists have objected to the change in the culture to cosmetic surgery as it is dangerous, it
changes the whole perception of the aging process, and it draws on old-fashioned notions to
erase particular facial features.

Although feminists assess the degree to which the practice of cosmetic surgery reflects on the
individual’s experience of her surgical self as cosmetic surgery is understood to be a submission
to patriarchal interests, many scholars disagree as they believe women who have the desire for
surgery and submit to supreme standards of beauty experience the feeling of freedom,
pleasure, choice, power and ability.

Instead of completely criticizing cosmetic surgery, scholars like Davis focus on the subjectivity of
surgical consumers as some of them feel they have a more sound identity after altering their
features. Many consumers felt they looked very ugly, awful, unaesthetic or even dirty about
particular body defects. In this case, it is not about changing a body part for the sake of looking
more beautiful, it is an attempt to lessen a problem which has become an unbearable suffering
for several people. The feeling of having small breasts or many wrinkles is no less devastating to
a person’s sense of self than the feeling of being born with a deformity or coming to terms with
a disturbing accident. Cosmetic surgery was a remedy to this suffering and patients felt this
was an empowered act that presented themselves as courageous protagonists.

Feminism is secondary as the means to challenge the abnormal body which generates suffering.
Cosmetic surgery was found to be important as a solution to problems of self-identity. Popular
representation of surgical culture authorizes and expresses its normalization and is reflected by
post-feminist ideologies.

POST-FEMINISM AND THE SURGICAL MEDIASCRAPE:

The negativity like vanity, superficiality and inauthenticity associated with cosmetic surgery
found a new legality with public culture of post-feminist ways to imagine the surgical subject.
The pessimistic stigma that was attached to cosmetic surgery was attributed in part to feminist
understanding of the body, where equity and peace had to be made with the body of each
rather than suffering patriarchal principles. These notions were weighed down by post-
feminists who reframed appearance work as individual choice, self-love and empowerment
rather than submission to patriarchy. It expresses through media texts the individualist and
consumerist frames such as “girl power” feminism of the 1990’s or the open-minded
celebration of sexuality, fashion and careers in modern times.

Some scholars like Sander Gilman feel that in about 10 years, cosmetic surgery will be so
common that a person who does not undergo a procedure would be an exception. He explains
in his books how many people try to erase their body parts which distinguish them according to
their race like their “Jewish” or “Italian” nose or “Japanese” eyes) to escape social criticism and
prejudice. Surgery is thus a tool of integration which empowers the individual in relation to the
culture.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: The Practice of Aesthetic Eugenics as Charity

There has been a rise in the number of surgical procedures which has been linked to the trend
in cosmetic surgery reality television. As people have been able to see what plastic surgery is
like and what it can do for others due to the media coverage on shows like Extreme Makeover,
there has been a strong incentive for them to seek the same benefits by going through it
themselves.

Extreme Makeover not only publicizes cosmetic surgery by staging the surgical transformation
of candidates, it also makes it important in ways which avoid perceptions of surgery as the
practice of the hopeless. It contributes to a post-feminist surgical fantasy by outlining surgery as
the means to empower the suffering individual. Cosmetic surgery is seen as moral rather than
oppressive, and as a cure for “sickness” and not an expression of cultural pathology.

In the show, one of the female participants was promised beauty and reform in exchange for
confession of a diseased appearance with the doctor. The opening sequence of the show
introduces the candidates who make a confession of ugliness and a confession of suffering
which serve to legitimize the surgical application. The candidate along with the family and
friends and the narrator testify to the suffering the imperfect appearance brings.

A candidate named David claimed that his infant son found him unattractive. Another
candidate, Lori testified that her children and her were often teased about Lori’s “witch” nose,
whose daughter confessed to feeling sad that her mother could not go to school with her
because of her face and the stuff that was wrong with her.

Testimonies of suffering of candidates included reports of loneliness, poor job prospects, social
phobia, bullying and the incapability to find a friend. Candidates felt it was their physical
appearance that was the cause for the suffering, and not the cruelty of others.

Many of them said that it was the work they did in the service of others was what had taken a
toll on their appearance which was supplemented by a positive testimony about their moral
worthiness from a loved one. For example, Sandra spent 30 years caring for her disabled
husband; Kari lost a son etc. This made the make-over of the candidates look like an act of
charity that was bestowed upon a morally worthy recipient for the unfair suffering they
experienced. This portrays cosmetic surgery as “just”, as a cure for suffering and ignoring the
feminist argument that it is a cause for women’s suffering itself as it emphasizes on the concept
of an “acceptable” face and body.

In every episode, candidates are made to describe and demonstrate their flaws in front of the
camera. This makes the viewers compare their own body parts with that of the candidate on
screen and look for flaws in their own bodies. The show operates on the notion that ordinary
appearance is a psychological burden, therefore making it an “illness” as in the West, being
unhappy is identified with being sick.

The show repairs the damaged psyche through a cosmetic surgery and calls it a reconstructive
surgery as it restores the “dysfunction” of unhappiness. It not only repairs the congenital
abnormality and the lasting effects of a disease or trauma, but also fixes the impact of aging
and socially undesirable features.

There have been cases of both reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery on the show. Cleft
palates have been treated, replacement breasts provided to a breast cancer survivor etc. these
reconstructive procedures intensify the charitable dimension of the show.
Since during the confessions to the surgeon, the expert comments from the surgeon are aired,
it poses a threat as lay people are able to “identify” the flaws on their faces and bodies. They
are able to identify a chin which “needs” an implant to “balance” a face. People come to believe
that they can have any body as long as they have the desire to change it by letting the surgeon
rework on them.

While many people thought that women were more attracted to cosmetic surgeries, the show
aired male candidates who received reverse vasectomy. It also emphasized on the effect
procedures would have, like a chin implant would make a face more “masculine”, or a woman’s
nose could be made to look more “feminine”.

Although the most common request by women was for breast implants, there were
occasionally people of color who asked for a make-over. Angela, a candidate, confessed about
her experiences of racism because of her “big nose”, “big lips” and was called “monkey girl”.
She got on the show not to conceal her ethnic identity, but to have proportionate features to
have “better” looks.

Extreme Makeover devotes very little screen time to the surgery as it does not air the shots of
instruments or hands entering flesh, the presence of blood or opened body. It only shows the
surgeons face and has long shots of surgical performance without specifying anything. Instead,
the narrative builds on the climax when “revealing” the transformed candidates to their family
and friends. It exhibits how cosmetic surgery “works” to heal the psyche.

The candidates are ecstatic about their appearance, and the feelings of shame change into new,
empowered subjectivities.

CONCLUSION:

The makeover performed on the show render the body “cultural plastic”. The extreme nature
of the transformations which are openly promoted on television have endorsed synthetic
beauty values. Extreme Makeover amazes the “ugliness” and its remedy by erasing the ugly
features.

The show was essentially a narrative drama produced through the “before” and “after”, and the
cultural assumption was that the transformation of appearance would transform the psyche.

Feminism, which makes people think beyond their body to the culture which produces the
body’s significance, becomes displaced by a post-feminist logic of plasticity. “Ugliness” In body
and facial features becomes our choice and responsibility as cosmetic surgery has become very
acceptable.

NIP/TUCK: Melodrama and the Limits of Cultural Critique

Nip/Tuck is a melodrama about two philandering male plastic surgeons which has been
criticized by the ASAPS and the ASPS as it upsets the culture’s domestication of cosmetic
surgery through the detailed realism of its portrayal of surgery and through its undecided
examination of the impact of surgical culture on its gendered subjects. It avoids and reverses
the conventions of Extreme Makeover, and calls people narcissistic as they externalize the
hatred they feel about themselves.

In this show, the surgical procedures are aired on each episode looking at and into the surgical
body by showing bloody flesh or open cavities which fill the screen, making the viewing
experience very difficult for the audience who are challenged to watch or look away.

One patient had a large strip of flesh sliced from her leg in order to reconstruct the damage a
gunshot had done to her face. Her face was sliced above the brow and the flesh peeled down
over the eye. A metal plate was screwed into her skull via the wound site. A scalpel sliced
through the flesh along the jaw-line and scissors were used to snip through the underlying
layers of tissue to reveal a metal plate which is then removed. A lay viewer does not actually
know details of what is being performed; he is only privy to a expert, confused vision.

On the same episode, a facelift was performed. The skin was sliced and flesh loosened from the
forehead, pulled, and stitched. These procedures are so realistic that one reviewed assumed
real life surgical footage was included into the unreal text.

The creator of the show, Ryan Murphy, wanted to show that there’s a price to be paid on every
single level of getting your face done. His ideas mirror the agenda of feminist critics who
highlight the brutality of going under the knife. He tried to make people imagine the feeling of
having scalpels, knives, needles and scissors cutting into their skin.

While feminists analyze cosmetic surgery as an implication of the pursuit of youth and beauty,
Nip/Tuck has a random agenda. As viewers keep watching these scenes over and over again, it
may train them to look instead of look away. Fascination may displace disgust; awe at the skill
of surgeons may overpower the intended politics of the gruesome scene.

In an episode “Kurt Demsey”, a white man wants his eyelids refashioned so that he can pass off
as Japanese to win the approval of his intolerant, racist, prospective mother-in-law. It shows
the story of an individual who goes to great lengths to show his love instead of that of
“Westernization” of the “Oriental” eye.

Liz, the show’s anaesthesiologist and moral compass, routinely pops up in the show and gives
her opinion on feminism. She speaks of how she is ashamed of her job when she sees people
going under the knife. For example, one patient wanted to remove her breast implants, and the
audience was directed to watch an incision made beneath a breast. An instrument resembling a
crowbar was used to remove the flesh from the chest so that an entire hand could enter the
body and pull the bloody implants from the breast cavity.

The show often shows the cruelties of appearance through the breast, presenting implants as
dangerous and as a site of exploitation. They talk about how it is the reason for someone’s
return of cancer, the reason for it to weaken another’s immunity etc.

While some want to have a perfect face, others want to have a perfect vagina which is
appealing and pretty which is an influence of pornographic beauty ideals.

The show has rare moments where it interrogates the logic behind the domestication of
surgical culture. It talks of a culture where an attempt is made to address a psychological
problem with a surgical cure.

CONCLUSION:

The article examined what television suggests to publics to think about cosmetic surgery.
Surgery is viewed as an increasingly normal practice and the post-feminist ideals of
transformation are a cure for suffering, a route to empowerment from oppression and vanity. It
is celebrated as a transformation to self-actualization.

Surgical reality television provides viewers with information to imagine themselves as clients: a
name for procedures, knowledge about suitability of candidates. People take risks to alter their
appearance, and medicine has now become commercialized.

Extreme Makeover elaborates on bodies which are brought in line with prevailing raced and
gendered aesthetic norms. Women, with the help of breast implants, cosmetics, liposuction etc
become more “feminine” whereas men become more “masculine” with chin implants, hair
transplants, designer suits and by adding muscle bulk.

The feminist argument that surgical culture is about oppression and a renunciation of power of
dominant social forces because it instructs people to think of power only in individualistic terms
holds good.

In Extreme Makeover, the tears and narratives of shame that the candidate started with
contrast with the self at the final “reveal” of the new, surgically altered, dieted and
professionally made-up self; which leaves little room for doubt that surgery “works” to make
people happy, which in the post-feminist culture is what “counts”.

Nip/Tuck attempts to worry the domestication of cosmetic surgery by invoking its raced,
gendered and ageist practices. It represents the limited worth of feminist analysis within a
culture which has gripped the post-feminist judgment of surgical cure.
Both shows contribute to post-feminist mediascape which shows the inevitability of the
culture’s surgical turn, providing viewers’ limited room for negotiating their own responses to
the meanings of cosmetic surgery.

“Beauty is a curse on the world- it stops us from seeing who the real monsters are”. Beauty
becomes a horrific violence and surgeons are rendered as heroic for repairing the damage.
People in society are made responsible for their own suffering while the culture which produces
difference as the source of suffering is left intact.

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