Plastic surgery beauty contest and knitted vulvas

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As I finish writing a book on plastic surgery, it has become more and more obvious to me that we live in interesting times.    We live at a time when young people go to plastic surgeons with a photograph of their favorite celebrity, like J-Lo.  We live in a time when face transplants are becoming increasingly commonplace.  In other words, we live in a time when both wanting J-Lo's face and actually having J-Lo's face are possible. We also live in a time when we have beauty contests for women who've gone under the knife and their cosmetic surgeons.  Friday night, in Budapest, the Miss Plastic Hungary beauty contest took place.

"I think this competition is long overdue," said Marton Szipal, a photographer and one of the judges. "Hungarians used to laugh about plastic surgery but it's time for Hungarian women to care more about their appearance. They are the most beautiful in Europe."

The overall winner, Reka Urban, a 22-year-old hostess, won an apartment in Budapest, while the first runner-up, Edina Kulcsar, was given a new car and the second runner-up, Alexandra Horvath, took home diamond jewelery worth two million forints (£6,750). Their surgeons also received awards.

Proud to be plastic: The 'improved' beauty contest - Europe, World - The Independent.

According to the contest's website,  this was the first “plastic” beauty contest of the world and was to be about "beauty and harmony" (which may explain why one contest had to have her inharmonious toes surgically adjusted).

And just in case you were thinking this was just about the women, it's not, because their (male) surgeons were really the ones being judged:

Contestants proudly assume that the perfect body they now own and makes not only males’ heads turn is partly the work of a plastic surgeon.

Hungary, like the US, has experienced a significant economic downturn, but like the US, plastic surgery is not seeing a significant decline.  In the US, boob jobs actually went up last year. Perhaps that is because we have no choice but to go under the knife.  The human body (especially the female body since women account for anywhere between 85 and 95% of patients worldwide) cannot possibly be beautiful without heroic medical intervention. One of the fastest growing surgeries in the US is labioplasty or vaginoplasty.  These surgical interventions reshape the vagina, tuck the inner labia into the outer, tighten the vaginal canal.  They are meant to give all women what a friend once called "the twat of a tot."  Perhaps not a tot, but at least a prepubescent. Like the Miss Plastic Hungary contest, another beauty contest for vulvas is taking place.  The International Vulva Knitting Circle is busy knitting vulvas, of various shapes and sizes, to

challenge female genital cosmetic surgery (see http://www.newviewcampaign.org/fgcs.asp). Following our cosmetic surgeons’ fabulous lead, our aim is to ironically mass produce our own grass-roots line of vulvas that promotes diverse genitalia, and speaks back to the corporate regulation of our sexualities. Note we are deliberately not using a pattern for this project - encouraging people to explore real-life bodies for any anatomical and schexy details, and, most importantly, to get creative - this is ALL about diversity! (And desire, let's be honest).

I'm not really sure what "schexy"  is, but I am fairly certain, having interviewed about 70 cosmetic surgeons from around the world, that the surgeons are not being "ironic" when they reshape female genitals so they all look the same.  I am also fairly certain that the organizers of the Miss Plastic Hungary beauty contest were not being ironic (although much of the media coverage of it might be a bit tongue in cheek). What I am certain of is that we live in interesting times.  On the one hand, Beauty Capitalism allows us all to buy the perfect body including the perfect vagina.  One size fits all.  In this sense, it is an unusually "democratic" project since no one need ever look "different" or "ugly" again.  The standardization of bodies comes at a high cost- some are paying in dollars and cents, others with their lives. On the other hand, Creativity and Resistance live on in groups like the Vulva Knitting Circle.  Humans have always resisted standardization.  As Michel Foucault points out in his work Discipline and Punish, convincing humans to work at factories was not easy- getting them all to show on time was so difficult that they had to shut gates to keep latecomers out- and keeping them there for a full day's work was so difficult that they had to lock them in. Today, we can either standardize our bodies, lock ourselves into the factory, or resist or engage in both projects simultaneously (which is what most of us do, after all).  But I can't help think that the future will hold a strange mix of fully standardized bodies and some crazy knitting women refusing to submit.

Comments

[Brian In NYC]

Laurie I suspect when medical science figures out a way to surgically increase the size of the penis we'll see a great shift in those numbers regarding which gender gets the most plastic surgery.

[Caitlin Kelly]

As usual, we differ on this point. You seem persuaded that many? most? women are dying to surgically alter themselves, when many of us are just fine with whatever size or shape we've got and we find friends and lovers who like it too.

With the the time, money and attention they waste on plastic surgery to become "perfect", women could totally alter the world -- not just their hips or faces.

[Laurie Essig]

Gee, I didn't say most- although certainly many, many women (and a growing number of men) are getting work done. Plastic surgery and nonsurgical procedures like Botox are only growing in number. Resistance, like the Vulva Knitting Circle, also exists. Beauty capitalism sells us all stuff- you too- don't you shave? dye your hair? wear cosmetics? Some of us will buy boobs, others botox, and still others just a lipstick or two. Standardization of bodies is a process, one that some people are resisting but most of us are both resisting and submitting. You, Caitlin, are also resisting and submitting, no?

[Caitlin Kelly]

I do shave, color my hair and wear makeup. Which, I guess, is submitting. I don't see it as that, which you do (?), although I take your point that, on some level, it is submitting to these arbitrary standards.

I guess when it comes to injecting poison or collagen into my face and having someone come near with me a scalpel, that's a little more than I can handle. My rebellion is not starving/exercising myself into becoming or staying a size 2 or 6 -- to please whom, exactly? -- and truly not caring if I get below a size 12; even my ob-gyn's nurse, when, surprised as she recorded my weight, said "You carry it well."

I can hit to the outfield and still clean up nice. Works for me.

[Laurie Essig]

But we are talking about a difference in degree, not kind. I too don't do Botox or surgery (for one, who has that kind of money?)- but as one of the patients I interviewed said: Hell, going to the gym is way more painful than getting lipo.

I guess my point is, our "free will" comes in how we negotiate the dilemma that is our body in late consumer capitalism. I work out all the time to be "healthy" but also shave, pluck, dye, and spend insane amounts of money on anti-wrinkle cream. Am I really liberated from the Body Project? No, just negotiating it and resisting it differently than her.

And I would bet that even the women knitting vulvas as a form of resistance are themselves also engaged in the body project in some ways. But good for them for creatively resisting- like early factory workers who put their clogs in the machinery to mess it up- saboteurs.

[Terry Bayer]

People should know when to limit and appreciate themselves. Too much cosmetic surgery is no longer beautiful. And I think people who opt for such surgeries should seek surgeons of high reputation. They should seek surgeons who will help them and tell them what is just right and what is enough.