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Can the right to beauty ever truly be democratised?

Can the right to beauty ever truly be democratised?


Every time a celebrity shares details of their plastic surgery enhancements, like Kylie Jenner detailing her breast augmentation on TikTok this week, a similar divisive conversation arises – does plastic surgery transparency level the playing field or generate even more pressure to adhere to today’s impossible cosmetic standards? For the few that can replicate celebrity-approved procedures, there are more that simply can’t afford it. After all, the entire beauty industry is set up to keep beauty trends largely unattainable to the masses. Just as a trend trickles into a lower tax bracket, the goalpost shifts. So what would it look like to make conventional “beauty” an accessible right?

Anthropologist Carmen Alvaro Jarrin, author of The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil, has spent years studying how Brazilian plastic surgery culture came to consider beauty a basic right. Since the 1960s, plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy has pushed the idea of expanding plastic surgery to the working class. The idea behind it is this: giving people access to adhering to conventional beauty standards gives them a greater chance for upward mobility. So if losing weight can boost a woman’s salary by as much as obtaining a master’s degree, then investing in liposuction as a woman is (in theory) a comparatively priced but quicker alternative than furthering your education (patriarchy is hell).

Brazil isn’t the only country where cosmetic enhancements are viewed as an almost necessary part of existing and thriving in society. In Seoul, it’s estimated that between one-fifth and one-third of women have undergone plastic surgery. Increased accessibility, popularity and transparency for plastic surgery in a culture, however, can quickly turn into something Jarrin calls “cosmetic citizenship”. “Some people call it the dictatorship of beauty, where they feel like participating in beauty culture is not an option anymore,” they say. “It becomes not simply a right but a demand.”

Through their research, Jarrin has found that the state-subsidised cosmetic clinics in Brazil have become a testing ground for experimental techniques and procedures, putting working-class people’s lives at risk. Brazilian butt lifts, for example, have the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic surgery, but have still permeated global plastic surgery culture. “We are putting a lot of attention into appearance globally as a culture,” says Jarrin. “Consuming beauty is super important to people’s social standing, and there’s been a rise in appearance becoming central to who you are as a person, and I think social media has exacerbated that in a lot of ways.”

Some people call it the dictatorship of beauty, where they feel like participating in beauty culture is not an option anymore. It becomes not simply a right but a demand

It’s important to discuss the right people have to beauty globally in the context of the white supremacist Western beauty standard. “The beauty norms of the elite, and most of the plastic surgeons belong to the white elite, reinforce whiteness as the aesthetic norm,” Jarrin says. “So the idea of beauty as a right is interesting because we know what beauty standards are set by and who they’re set for.” This includes the political and historical conditions in which what’s deemed “beautiful” is formed. For example, it’s not a coincidence that ultra-thinness has returned as ultra-conservatism spreads globally.

“Nothing is innately beautiful; we have to say what’s beautiful and beauty capitalism in and of itself is a racialised project,” says Laurie Essig, professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Middlebury College. “We really have to think in a complex way about beauty and its long-embedded nature in the history of white supremacy and how it shapes a certain vision of gender.” While conversations rooted in choice feminism can paint plastic surgery as empowering, the reality is that women account for approximately 92 per cent of all cosmetic procedures in the US. “It’s pretty consistent that it’s feminised bodies who have to get cosmetic surgery, and I don’t think of that as feminism,” says Essig.

In Essig’s 2011 book American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and Our Quest for Perfection, she expored the rise of financed procedures, including charging 30 per cent interest for your medical credit on a breast augmentation. “From the 80s in the US, when credit was deregulated, cosmetic surgery became available to almost anyone who was willing to take on debt,” she says. “By 2008, pretty much anyone could walk into a cosmetic surgeon’s office and finance it but there were late fees so a $12,000 boob job became a $15,000 boob job for poor people because they’re going to miss some payments.” 

Whether it’s through increased celebrity transparency, state-subsidised cosmetic clinics or access to financed procedures, the idea that conventional beauty could be entirely democratised is antithetical to the beauty standard itself. “Beauty capitalism depends on selling us stuff,” says Essig. “But it seems to me it’s a human right for everybody to inhabit their bodies in ways that could allow them comfort and wellbeing.” This includes access to health insurance and gender affirming care. “Some people don’t feel comfortable in their bodies and might need to transform their bodies, but I don’t want people to feel pressured to change to follow one beauty norm,” says Jarrin.

In a society that overvalues beauty, however, the external pressures are only becoming more difficult to discern. Instead of playing into the system by making plastic surgery more accessible, we should we working towards dismantling a culture where beauty has come to be prioritised so heavily and influences so much.



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