Description |
ix, 370 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
Contents |
Introduction: Present at the Re-Creation -- 1. Plastic Surgery Before and After -- 2. The Specialty Takes Shape -- 3. Consumer Culture and the Inferiority Complex -- 4. The Lifting of the Middle Class: Aging in Post-World War II America -- 5. The Michael Jackson Factor: Race, Ethnicity, and Cosmetic Surgery -- 6. Beauty and the Breast -- Epilogue: The Eye of the Beholder |
Summary |
Many Americans now view cosmetic surgery as the most practical solution for an ever-increasing number of perceived problems - from low self-esteem to stalled careers - and plastic surgery has become one of the largest and fastest growing medical specialties in the world. But Haiken questions whether these "solutions" are not in some sense chimeras: by emphasizing the importance of appearance, cosmetic surgery raises serious concerns about how society views such intractable problems as aging, gender, and race - and about how Americans view themselves |
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In Venus Envy, Elizabeth Haiken traces the quest for physical perfection through surgery from the turn of the century to the present. Drawing on a wide array of sources - personal accounts, medical records, popular magazines, medical journals, and beauty guides - Haiken reveals how our culture came to see cosmetic surgery as a panacea for both individual and societal problems. As Americans and their surgeons linked the significance of "normal" standards of beauty to social adjustment and economic success, they also linked "undesirable" physical characteristics to psychological conditions such as the "inferiority complex," for which cosmetic surgery appeared to offer a sure cure |
Notes |
Originally published: 1997 |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [303]-352) and index |
Subject |
Beauty, Personal -- Social aspects -- United States.
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Beauty, Personal -- United States -- Public opinion.
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Public opinion -- United States.
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Surgery, Plastic -- Social aspects -- United States.
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Surgery, Plastic -- United States -- History.
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Surgery, Plastic -- United States -- Public opinion.
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Cosmetic Techniques -- history.
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Beauty.
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Public Opinion.
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Reconstructive Surgical Procedures -- history.
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SUBJECT |
United States. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D014481 |
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United States. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D014481 |
LC no. |
97019823 |
ISBN |
0801857635 (cloth : alk. paper) |
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080186254X (paperback: alk. paper) |
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