Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery [Hardcover]

Virginia L. Blum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0520217233 | ISBN-13: 978-0520217232 | Edition: 1

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. From diverse viewpoints, ranging from cosmetic surgery patient to feminist cultural critic, she looks into the realities and fantasies that have made physical malleability an essential part of our modern-day identity.
For a cultural practice to develop such a tenacious grip, Blum argues, it must be fed from multiple directions: some pragmatic, including the profit motive of surgeons and the increasing need to appear young on the job; some philosophical, such as the notion that a new body is something you can buy or that appearance changes your life. Flesh Wounds is an inquiry into the ideas and practices that have forged such a culture. Tying the boom in cosmetic surgery to a culture-wide trend toward celebrity, Blum explores our growing compulsion to emulate what remain for most of us two-dimensional icons. Moving between personal experiences and observations, interviews with patients and surgeons, and readings of literature and cultural moments, her book reveals the ways in which the practice of cosmetic surgery captures the condition of identity in contemporary culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Blum was a teenager, her mother convinced her to have rhinoplastic surgery; since it might increase her daughter's marriage-market value, it seemed to her mother irresponsible not to. A botched job resulted in further corrections, Blum's incurable addiction to surgery-and this book. As an English professor at the University of Kentucky and admitted participant in the culture of perfective surgery, Blum manages the language of media theory and In Style magazine with equal aptitude. As face lifts and tummy tucks become increasingly affordable to middle-class Americans, Blum argues, even those who have never considered the knife cannot escape cosmetic surgery's implications and its pervasive promotion by everyone from doctors to those who play them on TV. Having interviewed numerous plastic surgeons, Blum shows how they promise to reveal one's "authentic" inner self by unmooring that self from its current physical expression. Blum suggests that our pursuit of a superior "after picture" arises from our identification with two-dimensional stars of page and screen: celebrity culture's mirror stage. But as surgeons promise to harmonize the patient's eternally youthful self-image with a traitorous aging body, they obfuscate the actual, unattainable object of desire: not one's own lost figure, but the image of the star (itself often surgically maintained). According to Blum, such confusions bring either repeated surgeries or aggression toward celebrity bodies (witness our tabloid fascination with stars' surgery, and Internet games like Smack Pamela Anderson). While Blum's claim that "little by little, we are all becoming movie stars-internally framed by the camera eye" might seem unduly cataclysmic, even "non-surgical" women may value her honest probing of the paradoxical sense that "I am my body and yet I own my body." 18 b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Considers ways in which the practice of cosmetic surgery captures the condition of identity."--The Bookseller -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520217233
• ISBN-13: 978-0520217232
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #797,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, well written and interesting!, June 14, 2005

By 

Rosemary Thornton "Niece of Addie Hoyt Fargo ... (Norfolk, VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (Paperback)

I was stunned to find there are no reviews of this book here at Amazon. This book is a great read. I had trouble putting it down! The author is a professor of literature and makes an apology for stepping outside her field (of literature) to write a book about plastic surgery, but it is PRECISELY her background that makes this book so wonderful.

The topic is well-researched and yet presented in layman's terms and the stats and facts are nothing but mind blowing. She makes references to Frankenstein, which prompted me to go read THAT classic and she's right; we're now formed by society's impressions of our physical appearance (which is the link to Victor Frankenstein's monster).

If you think about this, it's rather insane. When people's appearance is improved, they're treated better by society and that gives them more self-confidence and inner peace. How bass-ackwards is that?

I don't know when I've read a more thought-provoking book than "Flesh Wounds." I find myself quoting from it to friends again and again. And it's also proving INVALUABLE in writing my own book about internet dating. (Available August 2005).

Rose Thornton

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Randy/ Oklahoma State University, March 23, 2005

By 

Randy Bolstad "Bolt" (Jennings Oklahoma, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (Hardcover)

The book Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery by Virginia L. Blum takes the reader into the minds of the individuals influenced by cosmetic surgery. Blum is an English Professor at the University of Kentucky and she became a victim of the cosmetic surgery craze when she was a teenager. Blum writes a very intriguing book about how cosmetic surgery captivates the interests of patients. She points out that society has taken to the fascination of cosmetic surgery, due to the fixation on celebrities. Celebrities stand as a two-dimensional image, where society looks to celebrities for body images. Celebrities are also looking elsewhere for body images too. Society is slowly turning into a unified body mold. Basically society is going to one day be seperated by groups of body types. Society is losing the individual identity that has supported our cultures for years. Flesh Wounds contributes to an understanding of why society is so focused on the outter appearences. Today, society is based on two negative aspects, that is whether a person is attractive or unattractive. Beauty does not make a person more intelligent, nor does not being beautify make a person less intelligent. I liked this book, because Blum does an impressive job providing the evidence of how cosmetic surgery is destroying individualism.

9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fluffy book sourced with National Enquirer articles, March 22, 2006

By 

Libb Thims (Chicago) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (Paperback)

Here's a real-review:

*The first 100 pages are about how her mother made her get a nose job that when wrong.

*The second 100 pages are about the Frankenstein movie.

*The last 90 pages are about every movie-star that's ever gotten cosmetic surgery.

And the whole thing is stitched together with an English teacher's weekend theory on how a mix of "Simulations and Simulacra" + "The Ego and the Id" explain why people get cosmetic surgery. If you're someone who orders books online based on catchy titles, then do yourself a favor and skip this one. How can a book on cosmetic surgery not even talk about the golden ratio?