Feminine Unity's Featured Guest, Laurie Essig
I am honored to welcome our first featured guest for 2011, Laurie Essig, Ph.D., a professor of sociology and women and gender studies at Middlebury College and author of American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and Our Quest for Perfection.
According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, human beings have always sought self-fulfillment through self-improvement or plastic surgery. In ancient India, physicians used skin grafts for reconstructive work in 800 B.C. Then, fast-forward to the 19th and 20th centuries when plastic surgery progressed in Europe and the United States. War injuries such as shattered jaws, blown off noses and lips, gaping skull wounds, and extensive facial and head injuries catapulted plastic surgery during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Over the past few decades, a large percentage of plastic surgery has been voluntary. It is done more for vanity than necessity as people are continuously seeking self-improvement at any cost.
Laurie Essig’s book offers insight into the behaviors of many Americans who are using their credit cards to charge thousands of dollars they really cannot afford to create bodies they’ve envisioned in their minds, seen in magazines, or seen on movie screens. For some, plastic surgery is a necessity, but others use it as self-improvement. For those who go under the scalpel for a one-time rhinoplasty or breast augmentation or liposuction, it seems harmless. However, a few become obsessed with having multiple surgeries to “fix” various parts of their body. From a psychological perspective, these few obsessed plastic surgery addicts may be suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which is a preoccupation with a defect in appearance. They will aggressively seek out surgical treatments to rectify their imagined or slight defects.
Whether the reason is sociological or psychological, Americans are swiping their credit cards to have what they are convinced are needed alterations to their body. Laurie has kindly agreed to discuss her book and her thoughts on topics related to American’s obsession with a perfect body and their brazen use of credit to get it.
1. From a sociological viewpoint, why do you feel feminine spirits are so dissatisfied with their physical appearance?
I think that femininity cannot be considered
in our culture without also considering the
economy. Consumption (shopping) was
invented as something for middle class
"ladies" to do to take care of their families.
Rather than producing soap or clothes or
whatever at home, these women bought them
at stores. Over the past 100 years or so,
shopping has remained a highly feminized
project that got tied into "the body project"-
the idea that we can improve our physical
appearances through diet, clothes, hair care,
cosmetics, and now cosmetic surgery.
2. In your research, what was the youngest and what was the oldest female to have undergone a “boob job” or other enhancement surgery?
I met 17 year old girls who were shopping for breast implants with their middle-aged mothers who were considering facelifts.
I met one 80something year old woman in a wheel chair who had had several breast implants over her lifetime but was now interested in a facelift.
3a. Would you say that the invention of the bra in the 1930s started the insecurities and feelings of inferiority in women who felt a need to have larger breasts to fill -- naturally or surgically -- a desirable cup size?
There definitely seems to be a relationship between the mass production of bras and the standardization of sizes and a sense that there are "normal" and "abnormal" breasts. From the 1950s on, women chanted "I must I must I must improve my bust" and padded bras came into vogue with the first breast implants- which were surgical sponge. So the breasts felt like padded bras- at first at least- but then the sponge and the body tissue grew together, hardened and created a big mess.
But yes, bras, advertising, pornography in the form of Playboy, - all made the breasts of mid century American women extremely "important."
3b. Would you point the finger at the Maidenform ad campaign from 1949 or at the designers of Barbie a decade later?
I don't think it was one thing. And I don't think it's really just about women. There's something bigger and deeper in American culture- and that's self-improvement through individual projects. Whether you're running to your spiritual guru, going to the gym, or getting breast implants, I think the idea is we can somehow made a better world through these individual projects. We Americans don't really focus on structure and community as a way to make a better tomorrow.
So somehow we believe that a perfect body or a perfect house or a perfect wedding or a perfect career will bring us happiness and a better future. This affects men, women, and everyone in between.
3c. Do you feel that the Barbie doll designer may have unwittingly started psychological issues in the minds of girls who developed into women with an unrealistic body image?
Barbie seems to be the standard for some young girls. I think it's important not to assume that all women/girls have the same reaction to her or anything else. The truth is Barbie is a white standard- yes, there are African American Barbies, but THE Barbie is white, blonde, blue eyed. And wanting to look like that Barbie is a white woman's project because she is the ideal white woman.
Most women getting cosmetic surgery are white (disproportionately so) and most of them are middle-aged. There is something about white femininity that is very insecure in aging. Perhaps it's because since the 1800s on, white womanhood has been imagined as most attractive when it is "childish" "innocent" and "pure." In other words, white women are attractive to the extent they are young or at least look young.
4. Is there anything to substantiate why the post World War II era seemed to have generated an obsession for larger breasts?
Advertising, bras, cosmetic procedures, film stars, Barbie and pornography all shaped our obsession. The desire to look like a porn star is now so firmly in place among young girls that they can buy Playboy clothing for girls or watch reality TV shows and movies about Playboy Bunnies.
Why the porn star has big breasts is complicated, but might partially be a result of watching porn on smaller and smaller screens and therefore needing to have bigger and rounder breasts to look clearly feminine at four inches high.
5. Has our society really demanded that women should have breast augmentation if they want to attract and keep a man, a career, a husband, or other things?
Hmm. It's complicated, right? Depends on the woman and what other forms of capital she has. In general, a woman lucky enough to have the best education, lets say at Harvard, and start her life with an inheritance,- so a woman with high levels of educational and economic capital- is under less pressure to have high levels of beauty capital. She can do well in the world and worry less about her appearance.
But it would be naive to think that even powerful women don't have to consider their appearance and make sure they are sufficiently "feminine" and "attractive." Consider someone like Hillary Clinton or even Nancy Pelosi. You might notice some cosmetic procedures there, certainly hair dye, cosmetics, keeping "trim," etc.
It's not that women are held at gun point by society. After all, we are the society we create. But the rules are such that we have to show some level of engagement with the "body project"- we have to shave and pluck, dye, maybe Botox, diet, etc. -- if we want to be considered sane. A woman with facial hair, bushy eyebrows, uncut and unkempt gray hair, and an out of shape body is considered "disgusting" or "repulsive" in our culture. Hardly a recipe for romantic or career success.
6. Please explain how Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics made average citizens suddenly decide to use credit to surgically alter their bodies.
The thing about Reaganomics- or what is sometimes called "Neoliberal economic policies" is they assumed that by deregulating everything from education to food to banking our economy would grow. This was true, kinda, but they also created a variety of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, slashed social services and funding for education, and made it easier for corporations to make huge profits. The result was that most Americans were worse off by the year 2000 than they were in 1980.
Let me emphasize that- it's not the recent Recession that has made most of us insecure economically- it was a long process of transferring wealth to the top 20% of Americans from the bottom 80%, making the US the industrialized country with the highest income disparity in the world!
This increasing economic insecurity was met with increasing access to credit (because banking had been deregulated). What did Americans do to try to create a more secure future? They took out loans- for homes, for high ed, and yes, for breast implants. But debt only ever makes us poorer (even while it makes the banks a lot richer). And that's the vicious cycle that has been happening for decades now.
7. Do you feel the Supreme Court had a role in America’s obsession with plastic surgery when they ruled that members of the American Medical Association could actively advertise and pursue patients rather than just wait for patients to contact them when there was a medical need?
Yes, and when the Supreme Court allowed banks to charge any interest rate the market would bear. Before 1978 when the Supreme Court ended anti usury laws with the Marquette Bank decision, there were limits to interest rates and therefore banks were not willing to lend to people who clearly couldn't afford it.
Since then, as you know, nearly all Americans have been given access to a variety of forms of indebtedness because with interest rates at 30%, the banks can "afford" the risks (even though we the people cannot).
8. Would it be correct to conclude that banks and credit card companies are bedfellows with plastic surgeons since they have heightened the surge of low-income people being able to get plastic surgery (that was once an extravagance for the rich) on credit?
Yes- and the US is unique in the sense that the credit companies work with the cosmetic surgeons' offices to provide this debt. I only encountered two or three other countries where such a thing is allowed: Australia, Mexico, but most countries would not allow such an obvious relationship between credit companies and surgeons.
Furthermore, most countries control the amount of interest that can be charged for credit and thereby limit its availability.
9. Are you working on new projects?
Yes, I'm writing a book on romance and capitalism called "Love, Inc."
10. Please feel free to share additional information about you, your book, and your work.
I guess at heart I am a romantic. I believe we can create a more beautiful future, but not through individual projects of consumption. Both the "perfect wedding" or the "perfect body" are dead ends. We need to think about changing how our government works, where we spend our resources, and taking care of each other and our world. It's difficult though. I can't help but be sucked in by advertisements and TV shows and start to think I need to: find the perfect marriage, get a face lift, renovate my kitchen, fill in the blank.
I really and truly believe, however, that by talking to each other, that by creating "reality check" or "consciousness raising" networks and groups, we can resist this endless quest for individual perfection and create a world that may not be perfect, but will surely be better.
If you are interested in learning more about what Laurie Essig is writing about, please visit her at the following sites:
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your information will not be shared with anyone. If you want your thoughts posted anonymously, please say so. Peacefully yours, Tonja