Flesh wounds the culture of cosmetic surgery - Blum, Virginia L. (University of California Press, 2003)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-340) and index
The patient's body -- Untouchable bodies -- The plastic surgeon and the patient: a slow dance -- Frankenstein gets a facelift -- As if beauty -- The monster and the movie star -- Being and having: celebrity culture and the wages of love -- Addicted to surgery
When did cosmetic surgery become a common practice, the stuff of everyday conversation? In a work that combines a provocative ethnography of plastic surgery and a penetrating analysis of beauty and feminism, Virginia L. Blum searches out the social conditions and imperatives that have made ours a culture of cosmetic surgery