Dr Alex Edmonds: Aesthetic medicine: health and cosmetic rationales in Brazilian plastic surgery

Date: 25 January 2012, 4.00pm
Location: Room 9.01 Social Science Building

Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Seminar Series

Abstract

In Brazil, cosmetic surgery is one technique in a broader array of services called medicina estética, “aesthetic medicine,” which includes hormonal therapy, genital surgery, ObGyn and dermatological care, etc.  This experimental management approach to reproduction combines a concern for sexual and psychic health with body aesthetics.  Much literature on biopolitics emphasizes the use of notions of normal and pathological to control populations and discipline bodies. But the positive, analogical, encompassing notion of health underlying aesthetic medicine involves a process of self-care that transcends the boundaries of medical institutions and is infused with the desires and anxieties of Brazil’s sophisticated consumer culture.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in plastic surgery clinics and public hospitals, this paper analyzes how a global medical technology is indigenized and transformed as it is adapted to local market dynamics, racial histories, and political and economic rationalities of health care.  It ends by reflecting on the ethical implications of the entanglement of healing and cosmetic rationales in medical enhancement.