My mid-term is over, and my students’ mid-term is also over. I finally have a chance to post something here.
In today’s Sociology class, we discussed a hegemonic discourse that imposes a specific standard of beauty, femininity and normalcy in the society. Think of Barbie dolls, fashion magazines, TV shows and commercials: we constantly receive a message that you should be ‘beautiful’ in a certain way but not others.
One of the articles we read for class was about plastic surgeries.* I assume that there is a massive amount of feminist literature on this issue. The authors identify two perspectives on cosmetic surgery in the literature:
1. False Consciousness and the Male Gaze (those women are completely dictated by the hegemonic discourse of ‘what women should look like’
2. Free Choice (the benefits of exercising free choice–feeling and being perceived as normal– outweigh the consequences of embodying hegemonic norms)
They try to make an argument that both are right but incomplete because those women do not recognize the hegemonic structure but they feel liberated after the surgery. In my opinion, however, the result of the interviews they conducted with 15 women who had a cosmetic surgery obviously supports the false consciousness argument much more strongly, even though the discourse comes not only from the male gaze, but also from the female gaze, media and capitalism.
Now, it is easy to criticize those who were too self-conscious about the size of their breasts, the height/width of their noses, and wrinkles on their faces. But what about those who had a breast-cancer surgery, or had an accident and got a big scar on the face? In a more everyday context, what about makeup, shaved legs, and high-heels? The logic behind their decision of wearing makeup is the same with that of having a plastic surgery.
The following is some quotes from the paper. Try to apply ‘the decision of wearing makeup’ or ‘the decision of shaving your legs’ to them:
“What the women in our sample failed to recognize was the way that their personal exercise of power reified the hegemonic culture, including compulsory heterosexuality as well as inequalities based on race, social class and age.” (826)
“The decision ….reified existing hegemonic norms regarding beauty and femininity and has unintended consequences for all women.” (826)
“Cosmetic surgery is an expression of the totalization of power than a means of liberation. Yet ironically, it is at this point that women feel liberated.” (835)
You can probably understand why it sounds very hypocritical if you criticize those who do plastic surgeries while you wear makeup everyday unless you can make a very good argument that “the degree” and “the circumstance” really matter and you can specify them.
Anyways, despite my argument so far, it is not my point to reveal the hypocrisy or to persuade you to abandon cosmetics. My main question is, can we exercise our power to dissuade those insecure women from having a plastic surgery or wearing makeup? Although their decision to go for it has a consequence of perpetuating the hegemonic discourse and ultimately harms all women, do we have rights to say that their feeling of insecurity should be overcome, and that they do not have ‘freedom to feel better’ in this hegemony? I know it is very frustrating for all anti-cosmetics worriors, which I regard myself as one of, but all I can do is to tell them the logic; I cannot give them a sense of security.
I was once weak and felt unsecured. Ultimately, from my personal experience, it is only your loved and trusted ones who can really give you the sense of security by recognizing and freeing themselves from the hegemonic discourse, by really appreciating your uniqueness, and by constantly encouraging you to believe in yourself. Thus, it is not a fight that each individual woman has to face alone; it is more of a cooperative project that all kinds of intimate relations need to work on.
*Patricia Gagne and Deanna McGaughey “Designing Women: Cultural Hegemony and the Exercise of Power among Women Who Have Undergone Elective Mammoplasty” Gender and Society Vol.16, No.6 (Dec.2002), pp.814-838