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Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery Kathy Davis New York and London: Routledge, 1995; 211 pp.
Reviewed by Michelle K. Owen Department of Sociology of Education Ontario Institute of Studies in Education Toronto, Ontario
In this provocative book, Kathy Davis asks the (feminist) reader to look at cosmetic surgery in a different light. Women, by far the largest consumers of the cosmetic surgery industry, are the focus of this inquiry. Not content with dismissing women who have their bodies altered as "cultural dopes," Davis reframes cosmetic surgery as a dilemma. Indeed, one of the main themes of this work is that there are no easy answers where women's lived experiences with their bodies are concerned. Hence Davis seeks to provide an alternative to what she calls a "politically correct feminist response" to cosmetic surgery.
Reshaping the Female Body is based upon interviews with women who have undergone cosmetic surgery, with medical professionals, as well as Davis's own fieldwork. Her research is located in The Netherlands, although she often brings in examples from other Western nations, such as the United States. Interestingly, there are more operations performed per capita in The Netherlands than in the U.S. This high rate can be attributed in large part to the inclusion of such procedures (until quite recently) in the basic health care package; women from a variety of socio - economic backgrounds were able to have their bodies surgically altered, providing that they could convince the medical establishment that they fell "outside the realm of the normal."
This discourse of normalization is most frightening when one considers that the people making such judgements are primarily white and male. For example, Davis cites a Dutch plastic surgeon who coined...