Botox Nation by Berkowitz Dana;

Author:Berkowitz, Dana; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC026000 Social Science / Sociology / General
Publisher: NYU Press

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Negotiating the Botoxed Self

The perfect combination of prom queen pretty with sophisticated conservatism, Dawn Goldstein is 5'9", has big blue eyes, and has a perfectly coiffed blonde mane. As a former beauty queen, she was socialized early on to learn that her social currency largely derived from her ability to achieve and maintain a youthful, beautiful face and body. From a very young age, Dawn was taught how to cultivate her appearances through exercise, dieting, makeup, and other kinds of bodywork in order to look young, healthy, and pretty. When Dawn was twelve years old, she was sent to a plastic surgeon by her father to have her ears pinned back. When she was fifteen, she learned to count calories. When she was twenty-eight, she had laser hair removal on her bikini area, legs, and underarms. And when she was thirty-three, she began using Botox.

On the surface, Dawn Goldstein fulfilled every societal stereotype of a Botox user: She was a former beauty queen, she was always impeccably groomed, and she was thin, tall, and attractive. However, my three-hour conversation with the thirty-four-year-old Dawn proved that such one-dimensional assessments and stereotypes miss some critical insights about women who use Botox, obscuring the complexities of women’s social psychological decision-making about their aesthetic labor. Dawn, a self-identified feminist, spoke at length about the tensions permeating her decision to use Botox and about her frustrations with the ubiquitous cultural pressure to accommodate to societal norms of feminine attractiveness. As a former beauty queen, Dawn always had to be very conscious of her face and her body. Now, as an adult and a successful broadcast journalist, she was even more aware of the cultural pressure she faced to preserve her youth and beauty. Frustrated at the amount of money, time, and effort she spent on her appearances, she joked that her bathroom vanity was littered with enough expensive creams, lotions, and serums to fill the cosmetic section of a department store. Dawn also bemoaned the fact that almost every woman she knew had used Botox, including her co-workers and close friends. Furthermore, she spoke extensively about her adoration for her grandmother, a woman who lived well into her nineties without any cosmetic interventions. She shared that, despite a lifelong preoccupation with her appearances, she believed in “aging normally, naturally, just like my grandmother. She had so many beautiful wrinkles, lines and creases, and that is what always made her so stunning.” Disappointed that she did not see the option to grow old in the way her grandmother did, Dawn was insistent that these days it was difficult, if not impossible, for women to be able to age naturally without the help of technological fixes. Ultimately, when she turned thirty-three and found that her monthly facials and expensive creams would no longer suffice, she resigned herself to trying Botox. Dawn was adamant that, if she were not on television each day, she would have likely made a different decision about using Botox in her thirties. She

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