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I am a firm believer in plastic surgery as a way to improve my appearance. I will go back to the operating table as many times as I deem necessary, if I want to fix something and I can afford it, then I will!
-Karen, 36 years old, model and doctoral student
This article explores the connections between US Latina beauty ideals and contemporary plastic surgery practices drawing from popular media and ethnographic interviews conducted with Latinas about their experiences, views and opinions regarding elective aesthetic surgery. Representations of the Latina and Latin American body by celebrity plastic surgeons and mainstream media are analyzed to understand the increasingly global character of the beauty industry. As used throughout this article Latina implies, in Myra Mendible's (2007, 1) words, a "convenient fiction," a "historically contingent, mass-produced combination of myth, desire, location, marketing, and political expedience," rather than an ethnic category sensu stricto .1
Whether they are in Bogotá, Miami, San Juan, Los Angeles or New York City, the contemporary global currents of the fashion industry influence Latina women. Fashion as a system of body stylizing or fashioning encompasses items that are both external to the body (for example, clothing, shoes, accessories and make-up), as well as body modifications including all manners of hair and nail procedures, tattoos, piercing and elective aesthetic procedures (for example, nose job, breast augmentation and "injectables"). Fashion practices constitute a good example of the integrated nature of cultural phenomena: trends on these procedures, whether superficial or invasive, are dictated by global fashion and beauty industries, which are in turn informed by street culture, celebrity pop culture, art, nature, architecture, technological and medical advances and so on. Television, magazines and Internet are media through which contemporary beauty and fashion styles are consumed.2 As they circulate through mass communication and globalizing media, fashion and beauty styles are also shared and spread through the time-tested method of personal interaction.
Examining media representations of the Latina body and understanding the body modification practices in which they engage is highly significant because among US minority groups, Latinos are the leading consumers of elective aesthetic surgeries (at 10 per cent in 2008, 9 per cent in 2009, 8 per cent in 2010, 12 per cent in 2011...