Doing Gender, Doing Difference by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1189386
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Chapter Seven

Accounting for Cosmetic Surgery: The Accomplishment of Gender

DIANA DULL AND CANDACE WEST

Within the United States, physicians claim a professional mandate to define the nature and treatment of disease (Hughes 1958; Thorne 1973).1 For most surgeons, this mandate includes the right to evaluate patients complaints, to determine what should be done about them, and to assess post-operative results.2 For plastic surgeons, however, the mandate is not so clear. The field of plastic surgery encompasses two categories of operations:

reconstructive procedures, which restore or improve physical function and minimize disfigurement from accidents, diseases, or birth defects; and

cosmetic procedures, which offer elective aesthetic improvement through surgical alterations of facial and bodily features (American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons 1988). In the case of reconstructive surgery, the professional mandate rests on the surgeons ability to improve physical function and minimize disfigurement. But in the case of cosmetic surgery, the evaluation of patients' complaints, the determination of what should be done about them, and the assessment of post-operative results must be negotiated in relation to what "aesthetic improvement" might consist of, and to 'whom. This, then, is the central dilemma of cosmetic surgery.

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