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Buying Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery in China . By Wen Hua . Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press , 2013. xiii, 253 pp. $26.00 (paper).
Book Reviews--China
Buying Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery in China is an ethnographic account of the political, economic, and social complexities underpinning the boom in cosmetic surgery in post-socialist, globalizing China. The author, Wen Hua, contends that the power of the post-socialist Chinese state is predicated upon consumerism and the pervasive discourse about choice in consumption. Through an ethnographic account of women's rationale for their choice of cosmetic surgery, Hua argues that Chinese women, while exercising their agency to undergo cosmetic surgery, not only are paradoxically cementing state legitimacy and perpetuating state power, but also are appropriated by the state to showcase a modern, globalized nation with Chinese cultural values.
In researching this book, Wen Hua engaged in a year of fieldwork in Beijing, China. Her methodologies included participant observation at cosmetic surgery clinics and beauty salons, and in-depth interviews. She conducted interviews with a government official, six surgeons, and fifty-eight women who had undergone cosmetic surgeries. Her interviewees varied in occupation, age, education, and social class. In addition...