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<a
href="%3Chttp://www.bergpublishers.com/Products/9781845206697/tabid/2476/Default.aspx?TabId=2476&currentreview=2%3E"><br>
</a><a
href="%3Chttp://www.bergpublishers.com/Products/9781845206697/tabid/2476/Default.aspx?TabId=2476&currentreview=2%3E">Skintight:
An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery</a> (2008, Berg, Oxford)
<br>
By Meredith Jones
<br>
<br>
Skintight is a compelling cultural analysis of cosmetic surgery
focusing on media, celebrities, globalization, and first-hand
interviews with patients and surgeons.
<br>
<br>
It looks at how cosmetic surgery fits into a contemporary world of
“Makeover Culture” through many varied and unexpected lenses, including
art, architecture, “extreme practitioners” like Lolo Ferrari and
Jocelyn Wildenstein, monstrosity, and myth.
<br>
<br>
The little pedagogies of everyday media teach us that we are always
ripe for renovation and enhancement. This book examines the cultural
logics inside makeover culture and suggests that “good citizens” of
makeover culture publicly enact urgent and never-ending renovations of
themselves.
<br>
<br>
Skintight aims to develop a feminist understanding of contemporary
cosmetic surgery that is beyond ideas of agent and victim, and that
goes further than the common feminist refrain of “just don’t do it”. It
offers suggestions about how we may live critically and constructively
with cosmetic surgery in all its contradictory, concrete, discursive,
and imaginary forms. It acknowledges that there are complex pleasures
and desires associated with cosmetic surgery, intertwined with its
offensiveness and terrors.
<br>
<br>
<br>
About the author: Meredith Jones is a media and cultural studies
scholar based at the Institute for Interactive Media at the University
of Technology, Sydney. She has published about cosmetic surgery in
international journals, and is currently editing a volume of feminist
responses to cosmetic surgery as well as researching a new book about
cosmetic surgery tourism.
<br>
<br>
Early Reviews:<br>
<br>
'Cosmetic surgery has become one of the most polarizing topics of our
time. While feminists have used it as an example of the impact of
sexist notions of the perfect body, other cultural critics and
performers see plastic surgery as a metaphor for the flexible body in
global capitalism. Jones carefully navigates the critical and material
terrains of cosmetic surgery and gives us a beautifully nuanced account
of what she calls "makeover citizenry." This is a must-read for anyone
interested in the body and global capitalism.'<br>
Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California
<br>
<br>
'Meredith Jones' excellent book playfully demonstrates the working of
mediation in the current "makeover culture", in which our bodies and
appearance are constantly being readjusted. It steers away from the
familiar moralism towards cosmetic surgery while also raising important
ethical questions about its specific procedures.'<br>
Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, University of London
<br>
<br>
'Skintight is a brilliant analysis of the world-wide (and scary)
normalization of MakeOver Culture and the rise of vanguard MakeOver
Citizens deeply committed to their never-ending techno-perfectibility.
Meredith Jones illuminates all the material and ideological pleasures
and pains, the seductiveness, the horror, and astonishing beauty of
these culturally-obligatory aesthetic/surgical metamorphoses. Her
engaging, witty, compassionate and intellectually rich odyssey must not
be missed!'<br>
Kathryn Morgan, University of Toronto
<BR>
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