Why is it OK for a sixteen-year-old girl to submit herself to anaesthesia, to have her flesh cut and pulled away from the muscle, to have a foreign substance put within the walls of her body, a foreign substance that can be toxic, in order to modify her appearance - to fit in with the Western ideal of physical perfection? How is this desecration of the flesh any different from binding her feet or stretching her lip? If it makes her feel more confident, more at ease in her own skin then we have to ask ourselves why. Why is it that a child, in America still not of an age to be legally able to consent to an adult sexual relationship, should feel the need to cosmetically enlarge a part of her body that is considered a sexual symbol? Why is breast size tied in to her worth as a person? Why can she not be happy with the way she looks until her chest has been cut and stuffed and sewn?
Why is doing that more acceptable than this? Or this?
Is it because it's performed by medical professionals? Because it can look "natural"? Because someone, somewhere said so?
Help me out here.
As to what got me thinking about this: there's an interesting and (dare I say it) almost balanced article trying to understand the motivations behind body modification that was brought to my attention today via needled. Of course any sweeping generalisations concerning tattooing immediately puts my hackles up but this piece made me feel altogether less stabby than usual. It's worth a read.
Oh and if anyone could answer my plastic surgery questions I'd be really grateful. It's bugging me.
what I don't understand
at 17:06
Monday 31 March 2008
Labels: body image, rant, tattoo
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5 comments:
I think it's important to realize that many of those forms of body modification that Western society finds strange (neck-lengthening, foot-binding, lip-stretching, female circumcision to a very extreme extent, et cetera) have the same cultural impact to their native societies that breast augmentation does to us and that they are often undertaken willingly, though the depth to which these customs are ingrained calls even that into question; it's hard to defy the hegemony when you don't know it's there, which is not to say that there is never any resistance but that it is often ineffective. But if Western society recognizes the right of a non-Western people to alter their bodies however they want and say, at worst, “It’s just the way they do things” or, at best (perhaps the other way ‘round), “It’s a beautiful thing,” then why shouldn’t it accept breast augmentation? It’s just the way we do things. I think a certain amount of political correctness is at play here; I find most forms of body modification to be ooky and unnecessary (though a personal choice, to be sure), but I would be lambasted if I dared to say that about a non-Western culture, and it’s becoming so that people don’t question why a Western teen needs to look 25 when she is 16. If we go back to the idea that saying “no” to breast augmentation and “yes” to other body modification is hypocritical, then what are we to do? Though there are many views on the spectrum between “unconditional yes” and “unconditional no,” I suspect that the people who say “All that stuff is gross, but a boob job is different!” are people who are dumb enough to believe that their self-worth is determined by their tits in the first place.
That's a really good point geetch!
I fall solidly into the category of "if you want to do it, go ahead - it's your body" and I guess when I sit down and examine it I really don't have a problem with someone choosing to have a cosmetic procedure done for aesthetic's sake. I think my main problem lies with the society that tells people they should physically alter themselves - in that kind of climate it's difficult to determine what's done out of desire and what's done because of expectations.
My rantyness comes from a place of exasperation that people can look at me like I'm a freak for having some ink work and yet the very same people class a nose job which involves breaking bones as a normal thing. I find it tough to get my head around.
I totes get what you're saying, as I, too, think there's something wrong with a system that in some capacity coerces body modification. If someone one called me a freak for getting tattoo, whilst she sat blithely paging through a magazine for a new nose, I would smile and offer to give her a head start :-)
That's a very good question. Because my girlfriend is a feminist activist who is a campaigner against female circumcision, I've given this subject a great deal of thought. While this is just my own obviously biased opinion, for me this question boils down to why I, like my girlfriend, think that female circumcision, even when it is done voluntarily, is abuse, while the choice to get, say, sex-reassignment surgery, which theoretically involves similar modification of the genitals, is something I will defend. And I think the difference, for me, is in the preconceptions and cultural conditions that lead to the making of those choices. In some African cultures, young women are told that they will not be adults, will not be marriageable, without having been circumcised, and indeed many women who choose to forgo the procedure are shunned and even disowned by their families. On the other hand, someone with body or gender dysmorphia issues, who feels that he or she has somehow been born the wrong gender, is going against the norms of society and risks being similarly shunned because they do elect to have this work done. This person does it for him or herself, and definitely not to fit in with society; he or she feels, against social norms, that this will make him or her a more complete person.
These are the most extreme cases, of course, someone upon whom society puts a great deal of pressure to induce her to do something to herself to fit in, and someone who chooses to go against society as a personal choice. Most body modifications fall somewhere between the two, and I think it is in the intention behind getting a procedure done -- if it falls closer to the side of societal pressure or that of personal choice -- on which we can make some kind of judgment about what should be basically ok and what makes us nervous or uncomfortable. Most elective cosmetic surgery falls somewhere between the two poles. On the one hand, it is a personal choice, and I definitely know people who have gotten surgery to correct something that really made them feel bad about themselves -- a very large or crooked nose, for example. I have a friend who told me that she never felt like herself until she got her nose job. On the other hand, of course, the reason that cosmetic surgery is such a huge industry, at least in the US, and of course I'm saying nothing new here, is that we live in a culture that has an unrealistic ideal of beauty, and women are being told that they will not be able to find love unless they conform to it.
So I think it really depends on why the person is getting surgery in the first place. Is this young woman getting breast implants because she wants to look like the models in magazines, or because she is dissatisfied with her body for reasons mostly independent of undue external pressures? Big difference, I think. And it is difficult to imagine a 16 year old being able to make such distinctions; we are all influenced a great deal by societal pressures and images in the media, but teenagers are undoubtedly even more susceptible. While I think that the control that most parents wield over their children's choices is ridiculous, I do think it is reasonable for a parent to judge whether their teenage children are making such serious choices in order to feel better about themselves, or to fit in with the crowd. This is why I think it is rational to judge the parents of a sixteen year old who has breast implants harshly (although to be fair, I know nothing about the actual case, and maybe it was a good decision for this particular teenager).
By the same logic, if I ever have children, and they want to go get huge tattoos, I will probably have to rein in my own impulse to say "of course! The bigger the better!" and instead make sure they know why they want to get them in the first place. If it comes from a good place (they want to put something beautiful on their skin), then hell yeah, but if they want to do it in order to fit in with all of their tattooed friends (a weird kind of peer pressure I myself felt when I lived in San Francisco), then I might have to tell them to think about it and wait a few more years....
And that's my longwinded $.02 .
i love this debate. love it. and everyone here has made some fabulous points.
it does come down to what "society" demands. society wants to homogenize individuals. Individuals, however, are originals, and when they chose something for their own reasons, their own agendas, it takes on a different meaning.
who am i to say that a young woman, who has always dreamed of being a playboy bunny, can't modify their body for that purpose? if she feels it makes her beautiful, then i have something in common with her; my tattoos, i feel, make me beautiful too.
i think the real issue here, the underlying issue, especially with plastic surgery, is the attitude that the hyper-sexualization of women is ok, and that doesn't equate to the male sex. when penis enhancements and pectoral implants are just as ubiquitous as boob jobs, then the playing field will be that much more even.
and on this completely random train of thought: what about parents that circumcise their baby boys? mutilation or hygiene?
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