Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery
By
Virginia Blum (Author)
Paperback
Available / dispatched within 1 - 4 weeks
Quantity
Description
When did cosmetic surgery become a common practice, the stuff of everyday conversation? In a work that combines a provocative ethnography of plastic surgery and a penetrating analysis of beauty and feminism, Virginia L. Blum searches out the social conditions and imperatives that have made ours a culture of cosmetic surgery. From diverse viewpoints, ranging from cosmetic surgery patient to feminist cultural critic, she looks into the realities and fantasies that have made physical malleability an essential part of our modern-day identity. For a cultural practice to develop such a tenacious grip, Blum argues, it must be fed from multiple directions: some pragmatic, including the profit motive of surgeons and the increasing need to appear young on the job; some philosophical, such as the notion that a new body is something you can buy or that appearance changes your life. Flesh Wounds is an inquiry into the ideas and practices that have forged such a culture. Tying the boom in cosmetic surgery to a culture-wide trend toward celebrity, Blum explores our growing compulsion to emulate what remain for most of us two-dimensional icons.
Moving between personal experiences and observations, interviews with patients and surgeons, and readings of literature and cultural moments, her book reveals the ways in which the practice of cosmetic surgery captures the condition of identity in contemporary culture. 18 b-w photographs
About the Author
Virginia L. Blum is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Hide and Seek: The Child Between Psychoanalysis and Fiction (1995).
More Details
- Contributor: Virginia Blum
- Imprint: University of California Press
- ISBN13: 9780520244733
- Number of Pages: 366
- Packaged Dimensions: 152x229x20mm
- Packaged Weight: 590
- Format: Paperback
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Release Date: 2005-05-10
- Binding: Paperback / softback
- Biography: Virginia L. Blum is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Hide and Seek: The Child Between Psychoanalysis and Fiction (1995).
Delivery Options
Home Delivery
Store Delivery
Free Returns
We hope you are delighted with everything you buy from us. However, if you are not, we will refund or replace your order up to 30 days after purchase. Terms and exclusions apply; find out more from our Returns and Refunds Policy.