Negotiating femininity with and through mother–daughter and patient–surgeon relationships in cosmetic surgery narratives

Abstract

Synopsis This paper explores the contradiction between dominant discourses of individualist decision-making and patient narratives of cosmetic surgery, in addition to relational understandings of the body in cosmetic surgery. Using a psychoanalytic methodology for reading interview transcripts called poetic transcription, the paper analyzes five narrative interview transcripts that explore five women's experiences with various cosmetic surgeries. The patient narratives stress the decision as one that happens in relation to others, and in particular parental relationships and romantic/sexual relationships. This is challenging to acceptable explanations for undergoing cosmetic surgery, which emphasize that the decision is made not to please others, but independently. Patients position mothers and mother figures in their narratives as symbolic of an idealized femininity to be emulated or rejected; at the same time, patients position their surgeons as either authoritative father figures to be identified with, or as romantic or sexual partners to be idealized.