The (In)visible Body: Feminism,

Phenomenology, and the Case of

Cosmetic Surgery
LUNA DOLEZAL

This paper will examine the experience of and drive for bodily invisibility in women
through the theoretical approaches of phenomenology and social constructionism. An
examination of the social disruptions of bodily invisibility and the compulsive avoid-
ance of such instances, particularly with respect to the fastidious maintenance of body
comportment and appearance within the narrow parameters afforded by social norms,
will lead to an exploration of the conflation of biomedicine with the beauty industry.

The feminist movement has highlighted that women, as social subjects, have
long been powerless, voiceless, and silenced until relatively recent times, and
veritably invisible in the power and social relations that constitute patriarchal
society. Women’s bodies, however, as objectified entities, have been promi-
nently visible within this patriarchal framework. Despite the invisibility of
women as social subjects, the physical aspect of female bodies has traditionally
been subject to heightened scrutiny; women are expected to maintain their
form, appearance, and comportment within strictly defined social parameters,
or else face stigmatization and the loss of social capital. The visibility of the
female body, as object, ironically engenders another type of invisibility: the fe-
male subject, in her efforts to fulfill the social expectations for her body, renders
herself an anonymous, normalized subject, unindividuated and hence unno-
ticed and unobtrusive.
In this paper I will explore the experience of and drive for bodily invisibility
particularly with respect to the experience of women in the contemporary
West.1 I will discuss the experience of bodily invisibility through phenomenol-
ogy and social constructionism, respectively, in order to demonstrate the

Hypatia vol. 25, no. 2 (Spring, 2010) r by Hypatia, Inc.

358 Hypatia

parallel drives for bodily absence and social acceptance that inform embodied
life. Social disruptions of bodily intentionality, and the compulsive avoidance
of such instances, particularly with respect to women and their fastidious main-
tenance of body comportment and appearance within the narrow parameters
afforded by social norms, will be the focus of the second half of this paper, uti-
lizing the case of cosmetic surgery to illustrate the manner through which
ordinary bodily states and functions have become pathologized such that social
and pathological disruptions of bodily intentionality have become confounded.

INVISIBILITY AND ACCEPTANCE: PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL

CONSTRUCTIONIST ACCOUNTS OF EMBODIMENT

Bodies are visible; they can be seen. In most intersubjective encounters, ap-
pearance and comportment are subject to the gaze of the other. Indeed,
women, as feminist theorists such as Sandra Lee Bartky argue, are in ‘‘a state
of conscious and permanent visibility’’ (Bartky 1998, 42). The appearance and
bodily behavior of women is subject to constant social scrutiny; the body is
always on display, in performance, and under critical examination. Indeed, ap-
pearances are not a trivial concern for women; they are ‘‘more than just
surfaces. They are intimately linked to valuations of oneself ’’ (Skeggs 2002,
317). Hence, the experience of embodiment for most women, feminist theo-
rists have argued, is one of constant body visibility, where the body’s
appearance and comportment is self-consciously regarded as an object for a
present or imagined third-person spectator. John Berger makes this point in
his book Ways of Seeing, writing, ‘‘A woman must continually watch
herself. She is almost continuously accompanied by her own image of herself ’’
(Berger 1972, 46).
However, interestingly, much contemporary philosophical embodiment
theory outside of feminism, particularly in phenomenology, deals with the ex-
perience and drive for bodily invisibility. Phenomenology, as a philosophical
approach, takes first-person, intuitive experience of phenomena as the starting
point for its investigations and attempts to determine the essential features of
experience as it is lived. Hence, bodily invisibility in the phenomenological
approach is an experience in which one’s own body is largely unnoticed while
the subject is in an externalized state of perception and intentional agency with
relation to the physical and social environment.
The assumption is that the optimally functioning, lived body, as experi-
enced from the perspective of the performing subject, is characterized by what
Shaun Gallagher terms the ‘‘absently available body’’ (Gallagher 2004, 278).
In this sort of ‘‘successful’’ and ‘‘healthy’’ bodily experience, the body seamlessly
facilitates the subject’s relation to the external environment, and, as such, it is
largely unnoticed; there is no need for the subject to clearly perceive his or her
 Luna Dolezal 359

own physical structure, and it remains the silent background to projects and
interactions in the world (269). Phenomenological, corporeal absence is taken
up by Drew Leder in his work The Absent Body, where he explores the fact that
while ‘‘in one sense the body is the most abiding and inescapable presence in
our lives, it is also essentially characterized by absence’’ (Leder 1990, 1).
However, the experience of bodily invisibility can become ruptured, and
one’s own body can be brought to one’s attention. Usually this is characterized
in the literature as occurring as a result of some sort of performative failure
through illness or pain: the body appears in the field of consciousness when it
breaks down, fails, or loses equilibrium with its surroundings. Instead of flaw-
lessly facilitating a relation to the external world, the body ‘‘gets in the way,’’ so
to speak. Hence, many theorists argue that in normal circumstances the ‘‘body
remains absent to consciousness until there is a forced reflection brought on by
pain, discomfort [or] fatigue’’ (Gallagher 2004, 276). In these cases, the body is
perceived in an alienated and frustrated manner as a material object that stands
as an obstacle to my relation to the world.2 Implicit in this sort of embodiment
theory are the assumptions that the body, in normal circumstances, should
remain unnoticed and that any disruption of this bodily absence or invisibility
is pathological and should be eradicated, potentially treated with biomedical
intervention. This has important implications for feminist and disability the-
orists, as shall be seen.
First, it is important to note that there is another type of bodily invisibility
that the embodied subject strives for in order to ensure the phenomenological
experience of successful agency and intentionality in the world. This is the
experience of social invisibility, where the subject aims to have a ‘‘visually
unobtrusive body’’ that will pass ‘‘unnoticed within the milieu of anonymity
that is the hallmark of social relations’’ (Garland-Thomson 2004, 8). The
body, its comportment and physical aspect, is seen and judged by the others
that constitute its social milieu, and when the gaze of the other is ‘‘highly dis-
tanced, antagonistic, or objectifying . . . I can become conscious of myself as an
alien thing’’ (Leder 1990, 96). Body objectification, it is argued, can have the
same disruptive effect as a dysfunction due to illness or pain, in that the body
comes to the fore of attention through an ‘‘affective disturbance,’’ and the
external, perceptual relation to the environment or world is disrupted or mod-
ified (Heyes 2007, 24). Leder terms this experience ‘‘social dys-appearance’’
(Leder 1990, 96).
Bartky describes this experience of the body coming to the acute attention
of the subject due to the antagonizing and objectifying gaze of the other:
It is a fine spring day, and with an utter lack of self-conscious-
ness, I am bouncing down the street. Suddenly I hear men’s
voices. Catcalls and whistles fill the air. These noises are clearly
360 Hypatia

sexual in intent and they are meant for me; they come from
across the street. I freeze. . . . My face flushes and my motions
become stiff and self-conscious. The body which only a moment
before I inhabited with such ease now floods my consciousness. I
have been made into an object. . . . There is an element of com-
pulsion in this encounter, in this being-made-to-be-aware of
one’s own flesh. (Bartky 1990, 27, cited in Heyes 2007, 24)
The transparency of the body and its intentional actions, as shown in this
example, can be disrupted through the objectifying and judgmental gaze of the
other: ‘‘one incorporates an alien gaze, away, apart, asunder, from one’s own,
which provokes an explicit thematization of the body’’ (Leder 1990, 99). Ob-
jectification of the self in the face of the other’s presence arises not merely as a
result of the encounter with the other, but as a result of an ‘‘ethical distance or
condemnation’’ (97). It is a judgmental gaze where the body’s appearance or
comportment is being scrutinized and evaluated.
Like pain or illness, which likewise thematize the body, social dys-appear-
ance is an uncomfortable and undesirable experiential state in which the body-
subject is felt to be exposed, vulnerable, and ashamed. In order to avoid social
dys-appearance, the subject seeks to behave within socially acceptable param-
eters and, in addition, to ensure that the body’s physical aspect conforms to
socially acceptable norms.
Although it is certainly not the case that every social encounter leads to a
shameful and disruptive experience,3 Leder’s evaluation of social disruptions of
bodily invisibility lead the reader to believe that they are marginal and deviant
from so-called ‘‘normal’’ experience (Leder 1990, 96–98). As a result, Leder has
been criticized for underestimating the importance of body thematization due
to intersubjective encounters, particularly in the experience of women. Indeed,
Heyes more accurately argues that ‘‘social dys-appearance has apparently be-
come for many persons in the West the default mode of experiencing the body’’
(Heyes 2007, 25).
Susceptibility to the experience of social dys-appearance, Heyes argues, is
particularly apparent for women. Leder likewise admits that ‘‘women are not
full cosubjectivities, free to experience from a tacit body.’’ He concedes that,
unlike men, women ‘‘must maintain a constant awareness of how they appear
to men in terms of physical attractiveness and other forms of acceptability’’
(Leder 1990, 99). He writes:
For example, while a woman may become self-conscious walking
in front of whistling longshoremen, they do not experience similar
objectification in the face of her angry look back. As she is largely
powerless in the situation, her perspective need not be incorpo-
rated; it can safely be laughed away or ignored. (99)
 Luna Dolezal 361

Despite these astonishing acknowledgments that the phenomenological ex-

perience of the absent body is in part determined by gender and power relations
(to say nothing of race or disability), Leder does not at all theorize the effect or
significance of social dys-appearance for women.
Erving Goffman’s work is of inordinate relevance for the lived experience of
women, but he likewise does not explicitly acknowledge a gendered difference
in bodily experience. Goffman’s well-known work on stigma offers a deeper
analysis of this embodied and existential need for the subject to avoid instances
of social disharmony and to maintain invisibility within a social context.
Stigma, Goffman writes, is ‘‘the situation of the individual who is disqualified
from full social acceptance’’ as a result of behavior or appearance that deviates
from the ‘‘ordinary’’ and ‘‘natural’’ (Goffman 1990, 9, 11).4 Being stigmatized is
an undesirable and deeply troubling situation, as the ‘‘normals,’’ that is, the
non-stigmatized individuals, ‘‘believe the person with a stigma is not quite hu-
man [and] exercise varieties of discrimination [that] reduce his life chances’’
(15). The central concern in the stigmatized person’s life, which can be ex-
trapolated to be the central concern in any subject’s life, is, as Goffman puts it,
‘‘a question of what is often, if vaguely, called ‘acceptance’’’ (19).
Indeed, acceptance seems to be a basic and invisible drive in intersubjective
interaction. As a result of this drive for acceptance, the individual feels the
imperative to conform to prevailing social codes that dictate behavior and ap-
pearance. The reason why it is so important for humans to maintain a successful
social presence, ‘‘accepted’’ and free from shame and embarrassment, is not
clear and easy to specify. Indeed, as Schudson remarks, speaking of Erving
Goffman’s account, it is ‘‘for some reason’’ and ‘‘on what this reason is, social
scientists have been silent’’ (Schudson 1984, 636). It is perhaps not a question
that can be answered by social scientists alone, but has evolutionary, biological,
developmental, philosophical, and other elements that need to be explored,
and that are beyond the scope of the present work. However, turning now to
examine Foucault’s work, I will offer a clearer understanding of how the subject
can strive for ‘‘acceptance’’ and ensure social and phenomenological bodily
invisibility.
Foucault describes conforming to social norms as a result of the judgmental or
antagonistic gaze of the other through his exploration of the body as disciplined
by correctional institutions. Foucault’s philosophical and sociological project can
be broadly defined as a social constructionist account of the body, in that he
examines how certain bodily phenomena, such as comportment and appearance,
are developed in, and are products of, a particular social context. Describing
Bentham’s Panopticon prison design, in which prison cells are arranged in a
circular manner around a central watchtower, Foucault demonstrates how sur-
veillance yields psychological control in individuals (Foucault 1991, 195–228).
Incarcerated subjects became self-policing, monitoring their own behavior so as
362 Hypatia

to act within institutionally permitted parameters, as they are conscious of the

possible gaze of a judgmental and punishing overseer. Foucault writes:
[T]here is no need for arms, physical violence, material con-
straints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each
individual under its weight will end by interiorising to the point
that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising his
surveillance over and against himself. (Foucault 1980, 155)
Foucault’s account of the self-monitoring that develops among inmates in
prisons due to constant monitoring and observation and the concomitant fear
of punishment demonstrates the parallel development of self-monitoring and
self-restraint in the ordinary civilized subject. Social control is similar to disci-
pline in the prison environment in that it is not external controls, as
manifestations of punishment and violence, that render the social body docile:
‘‘Control in modern societies is achieved . . . not through direct repression but
through more invisible strategies of normalization. Individuals regulate them-
selves’’ (McNay 1994, 97). It is an important omission in Leder’s analysis of
social dys-appearance that the ‘‘antagonistic’’ gaze of the other does not have to
be actual; rather, as Foucault and McNay observe, it can be internalized such
that the subject regulates him or herself as a result of the imagined or possible
inspecting gaze.
Bartky argues that this type of self-regulation due to the real or possible gaze
of the other is particularly pertinent for women who experience their bodies in
a state of permanent visibility. She writes that ‘‘in contemporary patriarchal
culture, a panoptical male connoisseur resides within the consciousness of
most women: they stand perpetually before his gaze and under his judgement’’
(Bartky 1998, 34). Indeed, to maintain the social invisibility of the body,
women must act within the socially permitted parameters afforded by their
particular cultural milieu.
As discussed above, this is achieved through self-regulation that ensures a
‘‘normalization’’ of the subject. Normalization can be understood as the ‘‘modes
of acculturation’’ that operate by setting standards (or norms) against which
individuals measure, judge, regulate, discipline, and ‘‘correct’’ their behavior
and appearance (Bordo 1993, 155). As a result of the body having a ‘‘normal’’
aspect and behaving in a ‘‘normal’’ manner, the subject ensures the experience
of successful agency and action in the world. Thus, there is a reduction of the
possibility of a phenomenological disruption of bodily agency and intention-
ality through shame, embarrassment, or stigma.
Hence, what is considered a normal body in most mainstream discourse, and
as a result in subjective experience, is a body that does not call attention to
itself internally through salient physical occurrences or externally through a
disruption of social expectations. The normal body is the invisible body; it is
 Luna Dolezal 363

a healthy body, untroubled by illness, discomfort, or disability, which is fur-

thermore socialized and normalized to behave within the standards dictated
by its sociocultural context and to display a neutral physical aspect through
a meticulous self-regulation with regard to appearance and comportment
within intersubjective encounters. As Julia Epstein writes: ‘‘The normal, even
when understood to represent a curve or continuum, remains an inchoate
conception of a lack of difference, of conformity, of the capacity to blend in
invisibly’’ (Epstein 1995, 11).
As I have indicated, this sort of theoretical assumption is deeply problematic
for feminist and other theorists. First, it has led to the pathologization of many
ordinary and inevitable bodily occurrences that tend to bring the body to the
forefront of attention, such as puberty, pregnancy, menopause, aging, and
menstruation, which have become dysfunctional states subsumed by the med-
ical paradigm (Leder 1990, 89). Feminist critics such as Iris Young have
criticized phenomenological accounts of embodiment for operating according
to certain ideological and cultural biases in which the healthy, and purportedly
normal, lived-body subject seems to be a young, athletic adult male untroubled
by illness or any bodily malaise (Young 1998). This is clearly demonstrated in
Leder’s theoretical account of the ‘‘absent body’’ where the experience of
women is acknowledged to be profoundly different from that of men, but this
difference is ignored as insignificant. The implicit bias holds that the ‘‘normal’’
body is a male body, not necessarily in terms of its gender, but in terms of its
characteristics: it is socially uninhibited, untroubled by periodic disruptions
through menstruation and other ordinary bodily functions, nor by the breach-
ing of bodily unity and integrity, as experienced in pregnancy.
Margrit Shildrick considers disability and bodies that fall outside standard
bodily norms, such as those of conjoined twins. She argues that Western dis-
course assumes the ‘‘autonomous, self-complete and individuated subject’’ to be
the ‘‘standard for all’’ (Shildrick 2002, 67). Indeed, it is only the body ‘‘whose
integrity is so unquestioned’’ that ‘‘may be forgotten, transcended’’ (48). Thus,
the description of the invisible and absent body as the optimal or successful
embodied state, offered by many theorists, ignores bodies that may not be
suffering from any particular pathology, but that may merely be female, dis-
abled, or other.
Hence, in the quest for invisibility and normalcy, to ensure ‘‘acceptance’’
women and many minority groups have gone to inordinate lengths to control,
alter, and monitor bodily appearance and comportment. Considering this drive
for acceptance in relation to women in the contemporary West will be the fo-
cus of the remainder of this paper. I will focus particularly on the norms that
dictate body appearance and the conflation of biomedical discourse with the
beauty industry, examining the increased popularity and accessibility of cos-
metic surgery and its role in normalizing women’s bodies.
364 Hypatia

FEMALE INVISIBILITY: NORMALIZATION AND THE EXAMPLE OF COSMETIC SURGERY

In exploring the drive for bodily invisibility, I have considered two theoretical
approaches. First, a phenomenological account demonstrated that the lived
body’s experience of bodily invisibility depends on a certain level of health,
bodily integrity, physical ease, and well-being. Furthermore, I have examined a
social constructionist account, where bodily invisibility on a social level is en-
sured through normalization, that is, through an elimination and avoidance of
stigma, in which the subject is self-monitoring and self-regulating.
Fundamental to both the phenomenological and social constructionist ac-
counts is that women feel that their bodies need to achieve a certain level of
social invisibility in order to avoid social stigma or punishment, which can lead
to the disruption of the experience of bodily agency and intentionality and,
furthermore, the diminishment of social capital. Examining modern norms of
beauty and the conflation of the beauty industry with biomedicine will dem-
onstrate that the quest for the invisible body, both phenomenologically and
socially, has led to the pathologization of the healthy body for women: ‘‘almost
every body is now ‘‘failed’’ in some respect’’ (Heyes 2007, 17).
As we have seen, appearance is not an inconsequential concern for women;
indeed, Skeggs argues that the ‘‘practice of looking good should not be dis-
missed as a trivial activity’’ (Skeggs 2002, 315). Physical attractiveness is a form
of ‘‘corporeal capital,’’ and, as many feminist theorists have argued, for women
it can facilitate, affect, and determine social, personal, and professional success.
Bordo writes, women ‘‘have correctly discerned that these norms [about beauty
and appearance] shape the perceptions and desires of potential lovers and em-
ployers’’ (Bordo 1993, 20). This being the case, how a woman appears to others
is crucially important for what is ‘‘normally thought of as the success of her life’’
(Berger 1972, 46).
However, physical attractiveness is no longer a salient and superlative mode
of body appearance, reserved for those with class privilege, as Bourdieu has ar-
gued (Skeggs 2002, 313). Rather, physical attractiveness and beauty have
increasingly been equated with normalcy, due to the pervasiveness of media
and cultural messages:
With created images setting the standard, we are becoming
habituated to the glossy and gleaming, the smooth and shining,
the ageless and sagless and wrinkleless. We are learning to
expect ‘‘perfection’’ and to find any ‘‘defect’’ repellent, unac-
ceptable. (Bordo 1997, 3)
Indeed, Bordo argues that young people of today ‘‘no longer have the luxury
of a distinction between what’s required of a fashion model and what’s required
of them . . . . perfected images have become our dominant reality and have set
 Luna Dolezal 365

standards for us all—standards that are increasingly unreal in their demands

on us’’ (116).
As a result, in mainstream Western culture, the ‘‘normal’’ body has become
conflated with the ‘‘beautiful’’ body, and its features are dictated by ‘‘gender,
race, ethnicity, sexuality, class and ability systems’’ that ‘‘exert tremendous so-
cial pressures’’ through various means, such as mass media, advertising, and
medical discourse (Garland-Thomson 2004, 7). In the present age, the normal
body is characterized in general by a white, Western aesthetic of feminine
beauty (Negrin 2002, 27). It is a body that is ‘‘neutral’’ and ‘‘unmarked’’ and
does ‘‘not look disabled, queer, ugly, fat, ethnic or raced’’ (Garland-Thomson
2004, 8).
Female bodies increasingly aim to converge on what Garland-Thomson has
termed the ‘‘normate,’’ which is ‘‘the corporeal incarnation of culture’s collec-
tive, unmarked, normative characteristics’’ (Garland-Thomson 2004, 8). The
normate has a certain ‘‘corporeal configuration’’ that yields ‘‘cultural capital’’
(Garland-Thomson 1997, 8); in our contemporary, Western, image-saturated
milieu, it is easy to discern that the normate is young, heterosexual, Anglo-
Saxon, slim, able-bodied, with symmetrically proportioned features and
smooth, unmarked skin. Indeed as Garland-Thomson notes, it is ‘‘a very nar-
rowly defined profile that describes only a minority of actual people’’ (8).
Despite the paucity of real bodies that meet the normate’s standards, just a cur-
sory glance at a wide spectrum of fashion and gossip magazines demonstrates
the disproportionate ubiquity of the normate in the images of celebrities, mod-
els, and other public figures. These faultless images have become emblematic of
the dominant reality, setting the standards for normal bodies.
As a result, quite interestingly, what is now common sense about women’s
bodies is often counterintuitive. It is considered ‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘normal’’ for
women to be hairless, ‘‘although all women have ‘‘naturally’’ hairy legs’’ (Blood
2005, 65). A passage from Ali Smith’s novel The Accidental, narrated from the
perspective of a young girl, demonstrates how counterintuitive understandings
of the body are part of our ordinary acculturalization:
Her underarms aren’t shaved. There is hair there, quite a lot.
Her shins and thighs and the backs of them are also not shaved.
It is unbelievable. They are sheened with actual hairs. The hairs
are like hundreds of little threads coming straight out of the
skin. (Smith 2005, 21)
The natural state, for limbs to be covered in hair, is ‘‘unbelievable,’’ an odd-
ity, deviant from the ‘‘normal’’ state.
As women have learned and self-consciously adopted normative standards,
these standards have become taken for granted. Women, like other ‘‘disci-
plined’’ subjects, ‘‘experience social prohibitions as ‘natural,’ emanating from
366 Hypatia

their own inner selves . . . this standard behavior [has become] ‘second nature’’’
(Wouters 2004, 199). As a result, over time certain social prohibitions have
become so commonplace and ingrained in our modes of comportment that
they have come to appear natural and necessary. It is ‘‘normal’’ to remove hair
from one’s legs, wear makeup, keep up with fashion, wear constrictive under-
garments, desire a slim body, and so on. Not to engage in these practices is
considered socially deviant and in many cases is seen as either psychologically
or physically pathological.
Most of the body practices and activities that facilitate adherence to the
normate are consumerist practices invented and developed by the fashion,
beauty, fitness, and diet industries. Beauty, and hence normalcy, can be bought,
and it depends on a certain level of economic solvency, a state achieved in the
middle class that characterizes much of Western culture, and that permits the
purchasing of cosmetic products, garments, beauty treatments, gym member-
ships, and so on. Women employ various products and services as part of their
‘‘normal’’ daily body routines.
It is interesting to consider the changes in trends with regard to these body
practices in relatively recent times as a result of developments in biotechnol-
ogy. Until recently, women struggled with dieting and exercise as the primary
means of achieving a socially acceptable body shape (Bordo 1997, 59–60;
Bartky 1998, 28–29; Heyes 2007, 63–88). Creams, ointments, makeup, and
other products were purchased and employed to maintain and control the con-
dition and appearance of the skin. Achieving and maintaining the normal
body was achieved through personal and consumer practices.
However, as a result of developments in biotechnology and the increased
accessibility of cosmetic surgery, achieving and maintaining a ‘‘normal’’ body
has more and more become conflated with engaging in medical practices.
Beauty has become a medical concern, as demonstrated by the recent and
dramatic proliferation of cosmetic surgery practices in contemporary culture.
The body’s appearance increasingly requires medical expertise and interven-
tion to maintain its ‘‘healthy,’’ that is, ‘‘normal’’ state. As a result, the
social norms that dictate health in medical discourse, as I will demonstrate,
are being conflated with the norms propagated commercially by the various
beauty industries.
Indeed, Kathryn Pauly Morgan has noted that the beauty industry ‘‘is com-
ing to be dominated by a variety of experts . . . cosmetic surgeons, anaesthetists,
nurses, aestheticians [etc.]’’ (Morgan 1998, 151).5 This trend has become in-
creasingly manifest in contemporary beauty discourse over the last two decades
and can be seen explicitly in the new Irish publication Rejuvenate, which is
‘‘Ireland’s FIRST Cosmetic Enhancement Magazine.’’ The vocabulary em-
ployed in this publication is characteristic of a global trend, where women
are ‘‘patients’’ who undergo ‘‘consultations’’ by ‘‘physicians,’’ ‘‘surgeons,’’ and
 Luna Dolezal 367

‘‘doctors’’ in order to go through ‘‘procedures’’ in ‘‘hospitals,’’ even though

these aesthetic interventions are not at all health-related (Robertson 2007,
10–11).
Hence, medical and beauty discourses tell us that the marked, aged, over-
weight, or unattractive body requires intervention: it is an unhealthy body.
Clearly this association is not entirely arbitrary, as good health is often indi-
cated by a certain robust external appearance, characterized by features such as
a muscular form, good teeth, and so on. However, these external manifestations
of good health do not imply a standardized or normalized appearance. In fact,
the publication Proportions of the Aesthetic Face (Powell and Humphreys 1984)
published by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Sur-
gery, which is widely used by plastic surgeons and which claims to ‘‘document
objectively the guidelines for facial symmetry and proportion,’’ demonstrates
the racist, ageist, able-ist, consumerist ideologies that inform medical discourse
in this context and shape conceptions of the normate (Negrin 2002, 27). The
face presented in this publication is based on a white, youthful, Western aes-
thetic of feminine beauty, where faces with ‘‘deviant’’ appearances, such as
older faces, marked with lines and wrinkles, the features particular to an ethnic
group, or facial characteristics as a result of some genetic disorder, for example,
Down Syndrome, are aberrant and need ‘‘correction’’ to conform to this ideal.
Eugenia Kaw explores this phenomenon with respect to Asian-American
women who undergo plastic surgery, in particular ‘‘double-eyelid surgery’’ and
nose sculpting, in order to transform their features into those more character-
istic of their Caucasian contemporaries (Kaw 1993). Although doctors are
careful to avoid racist language in talking about cosmetic surgery procedures,
arguing that features become more ‘‘proportionate’’ or ‘‘suitable’’ while patients
‘‘retain their distinctive ethnic appearance,’’ it is evident that the dominant
aesthetic standard among cosmetic surgery recipients is inherently racist
(Heyes 2007, 99).
Cosmetic surgery used to ‘‘correct’’ disability demonstrates another normal-
izing tendency within medical discourse, which operates with an able-
ist cultural bias conceiving that all disabilities have ‘‘uniformly negative
consequences’’ (Heyes 2007, 98). Heyes, in her analysis of the reality televi-
sion program Extreme Makeover, reveals how some rather diverse disabilities—
albeit ones that can be corrected to easily conform to prevalent norms of the
able-bodied—such as deafness and impaired vision, are considered somehow
tantamount to unattractiveness in that they are corrected as part of a ‘‘make-
over’’ (98). In a more medicalized context, since the 1980s cosmetic surgery
procedures have been routinely carried out on children with Down Syndrome
to help them ‘‘fit in’’ (Dobbin 2008). Doctors argue that ‘‘Elimination of mon-
goloid features of the face (tongue, lower lip, eyelids, nose) has a positive
influence on rehabilitation’’ (Lewandowicz and Kruk-Jeromin 1995). Disability
368 Hypatia

advocates, however, argue that subjecting children to these unnecessary pro-

cedures is a form of child abuse (Dobbin 2008).
Collapsing race, old age, ugliness, and disability into a particular type of
aesthetic pathology, a pathology with seemingly only social symptoms, but
which, doctors argue, causes psychological stress and distress that can be
‘‘cured’’ through the use of cosmetic surgery, is the enterprising marketing
strategy of the commercial bodies that stand to gain from more women (and
increasingly men) going under the knife. As Morgan notes, ‘‘women are being
pressured to see plainness or being ugly as a form of pathology’’ that can be fixed
through medical intervention (Morgan 1998, 157). Indeed, the medical ter-
minology used to describe ordinary bodily features, such as ‘‘micromastia’’ as
the term among plastic surgeons for ‘‘too small’’ breasts, denotes them as ‘‘dis-
orders.’’ These so-called ‘‘disorders,’’ as Bordo notes, are ‘‘entirely aesthetic and
socially constructed’’ (Bordo 1997, 44).
In the last decade, elective medical intervention through a variety of inva-
sive and non-invasive surgical procedures has become increasingly more
economically accessible and, simultaneously, a more socially acceptable means
of maintaining the normal body. In the United States alone, since 1997
there has been a 457 percent increase in the total number of cosmetic
surgery procedures. In 2007, 91 percent of the 11.7 million procedures were
performed on women, and only 9 percent on men (American Society for Aes-
thetic Plastic Surgery 2007).6 These trends are mirrored in the United
Kingdom, where it is reported that 1,600 procedures were performed every day
in 2007 (Williams 2007).7 These statistics say nothing of the thousands
of procedures performed in overseas clinics for reasons such as anonymity,
waiting-list avoidance, and most significantly, reduced cost, where the cost of a
procedure offered in India, South Africa, or Thailand, for example, can be as
little as one-tenth of the price of a similar procedure in the United States. As a
result, the medical tourism market has grown dramatically in recent years
(Connell 2006).
These statistics demonstrate that Morgan’s observations have been con-
firmed: ‘‘Not only is elective surgery moving out of the domain of the sleazy, the
suspicious, the secretly deviant, or the pathologically narcissistic, it is becoming
the norm’’ (Morgan 1998, 148). In the present day, a variety of elective surgical
procedures have become as mainstream, and as financially and materially ac-
cessible, as joining a weight-loss program or taking out a gym membership.
Indeed, as Heyes remarks:
We certainly see more and more images of cosmetic surgery that
portray it as ‘‘no big deal’’; anecdotal evidence (the only kind
presently available) suggests that some consumers also see minor
procedures as a fairly routine kind of body maintenance that
 Luna Dolezal 369

belongs more appropriately in the salon than in the hospital.

(Heyes 2007, 106)
Indeed, in what must be one of the most audacious triumphs in marketing
history, cosmetic surgery is now seen by many as something we ‘‘need’’ and
‘‘deserve,’’ and the serious risks, such as disfigurement or even death, and long,
painful recovery times, are for the most part unacknowledged in the popular
media about these procedures.
The success of this marketing approach is corroborated in recent feminist
scholarship about cosmetic surgery, which reveals that, contrary to the com-
mon conception that women who undergo such surgical interventions are
‘‘vain and shallow,’’ and do so in order to enhance and beautify their bodies,
more and more women are seeking out cosmetic surgery as a means to correct
what they perceive as an abnormality in their physical form (Davis 1995; Huss-
Ashmore 2000; Davis 2003; Gimlin 2006).
In her guarded defense of cosmetic surgery, Kathy Davis argues that it has
been used by some women to alleviate psychological distress that is caused by
abnormal physical appearance, and that in this sense it can be seen as ‘‘not a
luxury, but a necessity for alleviating a specific kind of problem’’ (Davis 2003,
62). She writes of the women whom she interviewed: ‘‘I learned of their de-
spair, not because their bodies were not beautiful, but because they were not
ordinary—‘just like everyone else’’’ (Davis 1999, 455). Indeed, ‘‘these women
insisted that they did not have cosmetic surgery to become more beautiful.
They had cosmetic surgery because they did not feel at home in their bodies’’
(460). Huss-Ashmore notes similar findings in her research among cosmetic
surgery recipients: ‘‘the primary complaint of many cosmetic surgery patients is
less ‘I am not beautiful’ than ‘this is not me’’’ (Huss-Ashmore 2000). Debra
Gimlin comes to comparable conclusions in her research. She discovered that
cosmetic surgery is not a ‘‘beauty practice’’ for most of the women she inter-
viewed. Instead, ‘‘women sometimes have cosmetic surgery in an attempt to
lessen or eliminate their experiences of bodily intrusion . . . removing from ex-
plicit focus an aspect of the body that causes self-consciousness or discomfort,
or draws the attention of the alienating gaze’’ (Gimlin 2006, 704).
Hence, cosmetic surgery, Gimlin argues, is not simply an expression or man-
ifestation of excess vanity in contemporary Western women, but rather it is
utilized as a means to achieve normalization, a means to avoid stigmatization
ensuring the social and phenomenological invisibility of the body (Gimlin
2006, 711, 713). This is achieved through the elimination of bodily features or
characteristics that deviate from the internalized bodily standards of the ‘‘nor-
mate.’’ It seems that for many women cosmetic surgery is not about becoming
beautiful, but about becoming ‘‘unnoticeable,’’ ‘‘invisible,’’ and ‘‘ordinary’’
(Davis 2003, 77). In the next section I will explore understanding the use of
370 Hypatia

cosmetic surgery as a means to achieve bodily invisibility through the theoret-

ical approaches of phenomenology and social constructionism.

CURE OR MALADY?: COSMETIC SURGERY THROUGH PHENOMENOLOGY AND

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

The quest for bodily invisibility is a troubling one for feminist theorists. For too
long, women were largely powerless, voiceless, and unheard, veritably invisible
in the power and social relations that constituted patriarchal society. Hence,
the contemporary quest for bodily invisibility is not merely an issue of personal
aesthetic practice; rather, it is a political issue. Many feminists would argue that
rather than enjoying enhanced social capital through engaging in cosmetic
surgery, women are being coerced by normative standards and elements of
medical discourse to engage in body practices that can be detrimental to their
bodies and spirits, and that therefore can ultimately diminish their overall
social power. In fact, the divergent theoretical approaches of social construc-
tionism and phenomenology can offer descriptions of embodied experience
that in many ways capture the often contradictory and competing experiential
states of contemporary women and their drive for invisibility.
When seen through the lens of phenomenology, where in the classical
Husserlian formulation the body is the ‘‘organ of the will’’ and facilitates one’s
successful relation to the life-world (Husserl 1989, 59; Merleau-Ponty 2006,
158–59), women are willing to partake in these systems in order to facilitate
their daily existence in the world through an augmentation of social capital and
power, resulting from a mastery of body aesthetic and comportment. If cosmetic
surgery enhances one’s experience of bodily absence, and thus facilitates per-
ception and successful intentional action, then it is arguably for the benefit of
the subject, as indicated (albeit with reservations) by Davis, Huss-Ashmore,
and Gimlin. This is certainly the line of reasoning taken up by cosmetic surgery
discourse: the cosmetic ‘‘cure’’ claims to ‘‘change patients’ perceptions of them-
selves’’ in order to ‘‘facilitate improvement in the patient’s psychological
functioning’’ (Pruzinsky 1993, 64, cited in Fraser 2003, 33).8 Hence, under
this model, by making the choice to have cosmetic surgery women are empow-
ered, self-determining, and in control. This fits into the dominant ideology of
‘‘triumphant individualism’’ that Bordo argues characterizes the Western mind-
set: it is ‘‘mind-over-matter heroism,’’ which urges us to ‘‘‘Just Do It’’’ (Bordo
1997, 51).
However, social theorists criticize phenomenology for not taking into ac-
count social forces that have an effect on and, in many cases, delimit and define
embodied experiences. Turner writes that phenomenology gives ‘‘an individu-
alistic account of embodiment from the point of view of the subject’’ that is
‘‘largely devoid of historical and sociological content’’ (Turner 1984, 54). The
 Luna Dolezal 371

phenomenological account, Turner and others argue, posits the body-subject as

a purely autonomous agent, unhindered by the environment, social forces, or
other external factors.
Thus, phenomenological considerations are not sufficient in order to un-
derstand what motivates women to engage in cosmetic surgery practices, and,
indeed, to account for the normalizing forces and power relations within soci-
ety. Social constructionist accounts of women’s embodiment, from which the
classic feminist critique of cosmetic surgery arises, paint a much bleaker picture
in which women are portrayed as ‘‘misguided or deluded victims’’ of patriarchal
social forces that dictate aesthetic and personal standards in the pursuit of
which women cause detriment to their bodies and spirits, and effectively forfeit
their autonomy and authenticity (Davis 1999, 460). Davis characterizes the
feminist critique as follows:
Whether blinded by consumer capitalism, oppressed by patriar-
chal ideologies, or inscribed within the discourses of femininity,
the woman who opts for the ‘‘surgical fix’’ marches to the beat
of a hegemonic system—a system that polices, constrains and
inferiorizes her. If she plays the beauty game, she can only do so
as a ‘‘cultural dope.’’ (Davis 2003, 74)
Davis wants to dismiss this critique as overly simplistic, and she argues that
characterizing women as somehow duped by the system is not a particularly
useful way to understand why many intelligent, educated, and feminist women
engage in these practices.
Davis instead argues that cosmetic surgery allows ‘‘the individual woman to
re-negotiate her relationship to her body’’ (Davis 2003, 85). The women whom
Davis interviewed were all too aware of the social pressures that led many
women to seek out cosmetic surgery: ‘‘they would make disparaging remarks
about other women who were preoccupied with physical attractiveness.’’ They
seemed to think that their motivations for undertaking cosmetic surgery were
‘‘of another order’’ (76).9
As appearance has become pathologized and subsumed under a medical
context, it is not surprising that these women felt that they were seeking out
cosmetic surgery out of necessity rather than out of a more ‘‘superficial’’ aes-
thetic concern of which they were ultimately scornful. Indeed, this
demonstrates the success of the guileful strategy of those who stand to gain
from convincing women they ‘‘need’’ cosmetic surgery: it is not a matter of
appearance, but a matter of health and social power; it is therefore no wonder
that intelligent, educated, and feminist women undertake cosmetic surgery but
do not see themselves as ‘‘duped’’ but rather as ‘‘empowered.’’
Characterizing women as either passive victims or empowered agents does
not fully capture the state of women who choose to undertake these practices.
372 Hypatia

Hence, the two perspectives of phenomenology and cultural constructivism

reflect the paradoxical and contradictory state of mind of most ordinary
women, who are aware of the coercive and sometimes harmful nature of beauty
norms, but who are, however, unwilling or unable to give up the social capital
that conforming to these norms affords. The drive to embody the normate yet
to be oneself, to become ordinary yet remain individual, to be indistinguishable
but unique demonstrates this seemingly contradictory state of wanting to be
seen, but to remain invisible: to be an (in)visible body.
Understanding the drive for bodily invisibility through the phenomenolog-
ical and social constructionist accounts yields a richer understanding of the
mechanisms behind the drive for normalization of the body for contemporary
women and, furthermore, an understanding of how beauty practices are being
increasingly conflated with biomedical discourse. As normative aesthetic stan-
dards strive to an ever-unattainable ideal, more elaborate, expensive, and
specialized beauty practices, through the guise of medicine, have been devel-
oped to aid women to achieve this ideal. The desire for anonymity, whose
blandness ensures a general social acceptance, coupled with the desire for
health, whose physical ease ensures agency and intentionality, are driving
women to see cosmetic surgery as a viable means to ensure the avoidance of
stigma and the concomitant augmentation of social capital. Feminist theorists
must maintain vigilance with regard to biomedical discourse’s hold on women’s
bodies; furthermore, the consequences of attempting to attain social and em-
bodied invisibility must be continually reassessed and understood when
considering women’s physical and spiritual well-being and their social power.

NOTES
I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities
and Social Sciences. A version of this paper was originally presented at the Embodiment
and Identity Conference at the University of Hull, May 22–23, 2008.
1. The theme of invisibility for women has much relevance in other cultural con-
texts, for example, in the literal and metaphorical bodily invisibility of Muslim women
who wear burkas and in the informal and unrecognized work and economies in which
Middle Eastern women engage. See Lobban (1998).
2. Leder argues that the common philosophical formulation of the body as the
prison for the soul is given articulation in this experience: ‘‘That the body is remembered
particularly at times of error and limitation helps to explain the Cartesian epistemolog-
ical distrust of the body. Largely forgotten as a ground of knowledge, the body surfaces as
the seat of deception’’ (Leder 1990, 86).
3. Leder and others have recognized that there are many instances where bodily
objectification is not ‘‘the necessary consequence of sociality’’ (Leder 1990, 95). An en-
counter with the other can lead to what Leder terms ‘‘mutual incorporation.’’ He writes:
‘‘As long as the Other treats me as subject—that is, experiences with me the world in
 Luna Dolezal 373

which I dwell, mutual incorporation effects no sharp rift’’ (96). See also Van Den Berg
(1952).
4. Goffman offers three broad categories of stigma: ‘‘physical deformities,’’ ‘‘blem-
ishes of individual character,’’ and ‘‘tribal stigma of race, nation and religion’’ (Goffman
1990, 14). Originally published in 1991 in Hypatia 6 (3): 25–53.
5. Interestingly, when considering the gender of doctors, eight out of every ten
cosmetic surgeons are male (Heyes 2007, 104).
6. As Davis notes, it is notoriously difficult to obtain accurate statistics on the
number of operations performed as many occur in private clinics, whereas statistics for
recorded operations are only for those performed in hospitals by registered plastic sur-
geons (Davis 2003, 70n.).
7. In a recently launched website, the British Government Department of Health
questions this conception of cosmetic surgery as offering a psychological ‘‘cure.’’ Urging
cosmetic surgery patients to reconsider their ‘‘reasons’’ and ‘‘expectations’’ for seeking
out surgery, and to perhaps instead seek out a counselor or psychologist, the website asks:
‘‘Is it reasonable or likely that a change in your appearance will radically change your
life?’’ (Department of Health Website 2008).
8. What is interesting about Davis’s analysis is that she was unable to tell which is
the ‘‘offending’’ body part for most of the women she interviewed (Davis 2003, 76;
Heyes 2007, 109). That the body part in question was not apparent to Davis demon-
strates that the ‘‘problem’’ these women had with their appearance was not
intersubjectively corroborated, as in bona fide pathological conditions, but rather was
due to a distorted and internalized self-perception.
9. Beverly Skeggs explores this candidly in Skeggs (2002).

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