Customer Reviews

More Than Skin Deep: Exploring the Real Reasons Why Women Go Under the Knife

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Dr. Eskenazi's book provides a rare look into the beauty of plastic surgery. It follows several women into their journey to seek out plastic surgery for own personal reasons, breast cancer etc. It is a great book and a must read for all women contemplating this decision. The book gives women permission to choose without judgement and is written for woman by a doctor who sincerely cares about them.

When I had my plastic surgery, I knew I just wanted to look better. Therefore I was quite surprised by all the changes in my life that occurred after the surgery. This book answered many of my questions about my confusing and exciting experiences by putting plastic surgery in the larger context of personal transformation and ritual within a community. My hat is off to Dr. Eskenazi for framing the issue of plastic surgery as larger than the simple quest for beauty. Using her firsthand experience as a plastic surgeon, she eloquently makes the point--more is going on here, there is substance beneath the surface. As growing numbers of people go under the knife and afterwards try to make sense of their experience, books like this will be sorely needed.

This is a remarkable, innovative work, one which subverts the knee-jerk feminist vision of plastic surgery as catering to the worst vanity and anxieties of women. Dr. Eskenazi saw the gap between the 'cosmetic' and 'reconstructive' sides of her surgical practice radically diminish, as she listened to the narratives of female patients who came in search of both physical and spiritual renewal. Only a very few were addicted -- like Michael Jackson -- to some vision of aesthetic perfection. Rather, most sought surgical intervention as a 'rite of passage', after a particular life crisis or change, be it the childbirth or menopause, divorce or the loss of children.

Dr. Eskenazi provides a powerful critique of the mind/body polarity, and has argued for a vision of the 'embodied self' by describing the psychic transformations that even a dose of botox can have on a woman who had involuntarily frowned for most of her life. Her work defies normal disciplinary boundaries and brings anthropology, philosophy and medicine together. Male plastic surgeons do not reflect on their medical practice in this way, while anthropologists observe, rather than participate in, the process of healing and renewal that Dr. Eskenazi hopes to provide.

Do not expect an apology for plastic surgery. This is a demanding analysis, well-written and cogently argued. She suggests that the popularity of plastic surgery has increased because of the loss of other social and cultural 'rites of passage', reflecting a yearning for rejuvenation that our consumerist world cannot provide.

More Than Skin Deep is a 'radical re-visioning' of a topic that conventionally represents a self-betrayal of women. Here is a bold and startlingly new idea: plastic surgery as a chosen rite of passage, in which the woman making the choice is willing to undergo an ordeal for the purposes of sself-transformation. It has taken me by surprise and made me question many of my own attitudes. Dr. Eskenazi's views are cogently argued, compassionately presented, and quite tender in their understanding of a woman's life."