| Abstract: |
The practice and culture of cosmetic surgery has proliferated in the past two decades. While much feminist scholarship has investigated women's surgical stories, as well as the gendered sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts surrounding, and promoting, the 'choice' of surgery, very little research has examined material and symbolic risks associated with cosmetic surgery. This study employs a feminist interpretative phenomenological (IPA) approach to investigate cosmetic surgical risk experiences, as narrated by seven women who underwent aesthetic facial surgery. Our analysis focuses on how participants confront, and manage, medical, consumer and self-presentation risks associated with cosmetic surgery, under the political ethos of neoliberalism. The implications of these risk experiences are discussed in relation to the increasing normalization of cosmetic surgery and patriarchal/neoliberal obligations to construct a 'feminine' body through socially sanctioned practices. © The Author(s) 2011. |
