Another thing that bothers me about mainstream feminism is its wholesale condemnation of plastic surgery. In case anybody is wondering, I never had any and it is extremely unlikely that I ever will. The idea of letting anybody approach my face or my body with a scalpel or a syringe without a dire medical necessity is enough to give me nightmares.
However, as a feminist I do support people's right to do whatever they please with their bodies. I don't understand how anybody can simultaneously support a woman's right to abort an unwanted part of her body and condemn her for reshaping another part of her body that she doesn't enjoy having. Whenever you start pontificating that people should like and accept the bodies that nature gave them, you have to uphold the view that those same people should be happy with as many pregnancies as nature chooses to give them. Anything else is simply illogical and inconsistent.
Mainstream feminism often condemns plastic surgery because it is seen as an attempt to make oneself attractive. In a completely unreasonable way, plastic surgery gets associated with women who want to attract men as if gay people and straight men didn't use it. This dislike of the idea that people might make efforts to be physically attractive to others isn't feminist. It comes from a deeply Puritanical hatred of anything even remotely sexual.
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Some plastic surgery is for a woman's health. Breast reduction surgery, for instance, can mean an end to back pain, and increased health overall because exercise is no longer painful or awkward. People tend to think of plastic surgery as done for reasons of vanity only, but that's not true. If I were ever in a bad accident, I'd like to be able to get a reconstructed face, for example, rather than living with whatever the unfixed results were, though in general I'm leery of surgery for similar reasons to yours.
Hmm, I'm confused now. If women should have the right to do as they please with their bodies, should they also not have the right to wear what they please? Why do you oppose the burqa on the very same blog?
I only believe in defending the rights of people who do the same for me. In countries where burqa is the norm, I would not be allowed to wear my Western outfits. I respect the right of people in those countries to impose their ideology on me and I also respect them enough to request that they do the same for me.
Mainstream feminism often condemns plastic surgery because it is seen as an attempt to make oneself attractive.
I've never seen it being the case. Rather I saw, among other things, condemnation of the influence of ads industry, trying to make (mainly) women insecure of their bodies to sell more products to "fix" the invented problems. F.e. this post about new "problems"
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2011/04/17/be-confident-of-your-daintiness/
and imo there is some truth in the comment:
I like how the ad messages evolved from WW2, “Be beautiful while you work in the factories and marry a sailor!” to post WW2 get-back-in-the-kitchen and marry a veteran. The social engineering is really remarkable–it went well beyond creating needs and selling products to shaping behavior in all walks of life.
Advertisements still work that way, but I think they’ve gotten much more clever at being subtle. Insidious.
I have a huge problem with condemnation of advertisement for "making people do things."
Maybe I'll blog about it after my classes end today.
@Clarissa: That makes sense! :)
What is your response to other forms of "body modifications" like starving yourself to stay thin?
By extension, and I know this is probably taking it too far, should a person also have the right to take their own lives (it is their body and their life, after all?)?
Of course, I absolutely support people's right to take their own lives by any method including starving themselves, eating themselves into an early grave, or shortening their lifespans with overindulgence in drugs, alcohol, tobacco and deep-fried foods. I couldn't reasonably oppose these fundamental rights and support the right to abortion.
It's less "making people do things" than creating trends by planting ideas in people's minds. If it were unsuccessful, millions of dollars wouldn't be invested in ads. Once enough people "buy" the idea, you get influenced by it too, whether you wish or not. If a woman doesn't shave legs, she will very likely be negatively affected at work by it. Ditto RE makeup. It's true for many jobs, unfortunately.
However, I wanted to talk less about ads here and more about why feminists don't tend to celebrate plastic surgery. They don't talk about a woman's health or
reconstruction cases, but about promoting the view of usual woman's body as unacceptable without tons of makeup and plastic surgery.
Gave birth? Have a “mommy makeover". There is even a book for kids about it, see this interesting post with some quotes:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24187476/ns/today-books/
Low self-esteem? I googled "self-esteem plastic surgery" and read the first page of this article. Please, take a look. Imo it's quite illuminating.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/teen-plastic-surgery/story?id=12163764
Is it moral for doctors to do unnecessary surgeries on children and young adults (18-21), whose bodies haven't stopped growing yet (until age of ~25)? If they can't buy a beer, how can they consent to possible complications?
Where do young, beautiful women get the idea their bodies aren't good enough without operations?
Half of secondary school girls considering cosmetic surgery, Guides study finds... Critics have blamed the prevalence of cosmetic operations among celebrities and television shows such as "10 Years Younger" for making serious and often risky surgical procedures seem as simple as a trip to the hairdresser.
I don't see why feminists can't critisize the notion of surgery as no big deal. Heaven knows, nobody else does. Why don't you support taking man's name or staying at home as personal choices, but see critisizing the push to see normal bodies as ugly not OK?
So your central argument is the people should be free to as they please with their bodies. This I more or less agree with.
However, are people really free if they are being influenced by very powerful fictional imagery day and night? That is probably a question you'd like to answer in your 'advertisements make people do things' post. :)
"I only believe in defending the rights of people who do the same for me."
Does this mean that it is okay to torture people who would torture you? Kill people who'd kill you? Do you support mistreatment of prisoners of wars from certain countries because they do the same? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth?
I couldn't reasonably oppose these fundamental rights and support the right to abortion.
I don't think it has to follow. I don't see fetus as a person during the first months, so a woman, who is already a person, can abort it. However, drugs & eating disorders take lives of people and government may see it the limit after which it has to seriously consider interference in some cases and in some ways.
Nobody prevents people from smoking and eating unhealthy food. However, drug users and alcoholics don't destroy only their own lives. They hurt other people in the process too. In my childhood I was afraid to go outside because of a very tall alcoholic neighbor, who was jailed at some point for taking out another man's eye, most likely under influence. An alcoholic woman neighbor forgot about boiling water on the stove. Had the gas exploded, we could all be dead. Drink-driving kills innocent people too, not only the irresponsible scum, who do it. People commit crimes under alcohol's influence and can have dangerous illusions thanks to drugs, which do destroy one's psychique. They may have a right to kill themselves, but I have a right not to live in fear of dangerous, mentally destroyed people too and not being killed by them! Making drugs legal doesn't disappear the problem of what people do under their influence, f.e. try to drive.
If somebody is mentally ill, do you support their rights to die on the street or kill themselves? Imo, ill people should be helped. Yes, I know about past and present abuses of the system, but I can't support the idea of never stopping ill people. Many can be helped with drugs and therapy & live fine afterwards. Anorexia nervosa isn't a normal condition, which you hopefully agree with.
Much grayer area is forums of anorexics, including teens, where they exchange tips on How To and are a support group to each other in the competition who can eat less. If one can't put up How To Build A Bomb menual, why is it OK to "help" other teen girls kill themselves?
"However, are people really free if they are being influenced by very powerful fictional imagery day and night?"
- You don't really believe that mutilation of the body for the purposes of strangely understood beauty didn't happen before the age of advertisement, do you? Foot binding, rings around the neck, ritual mutilation, all these practices existed in the most primitive pre-capitalist societies. People have tried to transform their own bodies, often through extremely dangerous and painful means, since time immemorial.
"Does this mean that it is okay to torture people who would torture you? Kill people who'd kill you? "
-Of course, if somebody tries to kill me or harm me physically, I will defend myself with violent means. Wouldn't anybody?
"Do you support mistreatment of prisoners of wars from certain countries because they do the same?"
-I think that the fact that war criminals condemned at Nuremberg were put to death was absolutely the right thing to do. Don't you? As for the prisoners of war, if there was a trial that proved they committed crimes against humanity, they should definitely be punished for those crimes.
"However, drugs & eating disorders take lives of people and government may see it the limit after which it has to seriously consider interference in some cases and in some ways. "
-The problem with this is that the moment you adopt this paternalistic vision of benevolent and protective government that knows best what's good for you, you never know where it will stop. Either the government knows better or it doesn't. I feel like I'm qualified to make my own decisions about my own body, don't you?
"However, drug users and alcoholics don't destroy only their own lives. They hurt other people in the process too."
-The damage to other people is a completely different issue. I can't imagine anybody harming others with plastic surgery they get done on themselves. If somebody thinks they have been harmed by plastic surgery of other people, I'm sure they can seek redress in court.
"They don't talk about a woman's health or
reconstruction cases, but about promoting the view of usual woman's body as unacceptable without tons of makeup and plastic surgery."
-This view of human bodies existed for millenia before anybody heard of television.
"-This view of human bodies existed for millenia before anybody heard of television"...
That doesn't make it right, healthy, or good, though.
I'm not sure "condemnation of plastic surgery" necessarily equals a desire to outlaw it or make it impossible to obtain. But as long as one batch of marketing voices ARE out there telling women they are inherently flawed and need surgery or what-not to "fix" their broken and un-beautiful selves, I think it's important for other voices to be condemning those marketers at the top of their lungs and calling them on their bullshit, and even louder, helping women realize that they are gorgeous and amazing creatures just as they are, whether they have big noses or non-perky breasts or big round hips or whatever.
Do I condemn plastic surgery? no. Do I condemn, judge, or dislike women who choose it? No. Do I have anything but contempt for those who make their livelihood convincing women that they are ugly as they are and need someone to fix their outward appearance to make them worthy human beings?
No.
This view of human bodies existed for millenia before anybody heard of television.
Yes, of course. I wasn't talking about TV here at all. I was only saying that feminism must be against this mentally and physically unhealthy view. Otherwise, like you previously said about freedom in US, we [feminists] can all leave the idea and go home. The links I gave are quite interesting. There is entire culture to present unnecessary surgery(!) as "empowering" (I hate the word since it usually means the opposite) to kids since early age. Feminists don't try to forbid it by laws, they just criticize. To say all feminist critic comes "from a deeply Puritanical hatred of anything even remotely sexual" isn't fair and is extremely simplifying reality. Saying that feminists criticize current beauty practices since they hate sex is a very old idea, which I can't agree with. An average anti-feminist is much more Puritanical, yet many of them have no problem with women having lots of plastic surgeries.
@Clarissa: People should indeed be punished for their crimes. That is not the question I meant to ask. What I meant to ask was: would you defend their rights, for example, the right to a trial (even though they might be guilty), or the right to humane treatment in prison? Remember that these might be people who would not grant the same rights to you.
"There is entire culture to present unnecessary surgery(!) as "empowering" (I hate the word since it usually means the opposite) to kids since early age. "
-You are not seriously suggesting that anybody seriously says such things about plastic surgery being empowering to kids anywhere in public in the US??? That person would be crucified in the matter of seconds. Remember, we are not talking about minors here. That's a completely separate discussion. We are talking about adults.
The main slogan of the campaign for a woman's right to an abortion is " Trust a woman and her doctor." If that's what we believe, we need to trust that the very same woman is just as capable to make an all important decision to get Botox or have a boob job. If we believe women to be capable of making rational decisions about abortion, we need to believe that these same people can make rational decisions about the length of their noses or the size of their ears.
"would you defend their rights, for example, the right to a trial (even though they might be guilty), or the right to humane treatment in prison? Remember that these might be people who would not grant the same rights to you."
-Is there any country that routinely tortures American visitors (or prisoners) as a matter of policy? If there is, then it makes sense to discuss this. Otherwise, I don't see the point.
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