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Amending the Abject Body

Amending the Abject Body Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture - SUNY Series in Feminist Criticism and Theory

Hardback (27 Oct 2004)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Examines the implications and meanings of the makeover and aesthetic surgery industry in American popular culture.

Feminist theorists have often argued that aesthetic surgeries and body makeovers dehumanize and disempower women patients, whose efforts at self-improvement lead to their objectification. Amending the Abject Body proposes that although objectification is an important element in this phenomenon, the explosive growth of "makeover culture" can be understood as a process of both abjection (ridding ourselves of the unwanted) and identification (joining the community of what Julia Kristeva calls "clean and proper bodies"). Drawing from the advertisement and advocacy of body makeovers on television, in aesthetic surgery trade books, and in the print and Web-based marketing of face lifts, tummy tucks, and Botox injections, Deborah Caslav Covino articulates the relationship among objectification, abjection, and identification, and offers a fuller understanding of contemporary beauty-desire.

Book information

ISBN: 9780791462317
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Imprint: SUNY Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 306.4613
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 152
Weight: 354g
Height: 237mm
Width: 159mm
Spine width: 15mm