Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil (review)

Abstract

Alexander Edmonds, Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 312 pp. In Pretty Modern, Alexander Edmonds asks: did plastic surgery- a practice often associated with body hatred and alienation-take root this city known for its glorious embrace of sensuality and pleasure? (7). A compelling and carefully crafted narrative follows answer to this deceivingly simple question. city to which he brings readers is Rio de Janeiro also known the City of Beauty and Chaos (4), which has become a significant node plastic surgery's global network. Edmonds is quick to point out that to mention Brazil to foreigners is to evoke cliched notions about (and bodies), samba (and carnaval), and soccer. samba, and soccer triad shares one obvious commonality: the (mixed-race) Brazilian body. In the international arena, Brazil is associated not only with sensuality, but also with mixed-racedness. This national body-which Edmonds' renders ethnographiable-is constructed contrast to its historical connections to both Europe and Africa. Since Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved all of the Americas, race and blackness are pervasive themes conversations regarding national identity and the body (politic). These are topics to which Edmonds rightly devotes considerable attention to the examination of how plastic surgery is consumed, talked about, and enacted by upper and lower class women. He asserts that: in Brazil racial mixture, mesticagem, is neither chic nor marginal; rather, it is a dominant theme twentieth century politics and culture (127). Racial boundaries are blurred and race is often strategically deployed based on context, political persuasion, and individual preference. Like other places Latin America where racial ascriptions shiftin relation to context, individuals deemed as or real Africans (usually referring to with dark skin and kinky hair), are confined to blackness their only possible racial identity. In other words, a large number of Brazilians are unable to fully take advantage of the strategic ambiguity that mesticagem offers those whose racial ancestry is (phenotypically) ambiguous. Edmonds tells us that, sexuality-especially across racial lines-is a key symbol the formation of a new, mixed population with positive traits, such cordiality and physical beauty (130). A sex-positive national image, where whites, blacks, and Indians enjoy each other without prejudice, celebrates rather than racial purity (134). In Brazil, the mulata emerged the national symbol of beauty, sexuality, and passion. Yet, life this mulata must possess very specific physical characteristics, she must have a bunda empinada (large, round bottom), thin waist, be light skinned, have smaller breasts, and straight, preferably blond, hair. Edmonds writes that The blond is not 'really white' because she is actually a negona, part of the racially mixed people (133). He goes on to ask: How can beautiful morenidade encompass the nation yet coexist with color hierarchies privileging whiteness, especially 'white' physical features and hair? (135). Pretty Modern documents how individuals, the state, and the medical establishment are complicit the whitening ideal at work beneath the encompassing myth of racial hybridity and harmony. same contradictions and ambivalence that abound conversations about race and color coexist practices. For example, the same patient might seek a buttock augmentation, an ethnic marker to be sure, and a rhinoplasty to correct the Negroid nose, a de-ethnicizing procedure. Sexuality and gender are also central to plastic surgery. From Edmonds' striking ethnography emerges a picture which women-rich and poor; white, mixed, and black; young and old-are the main consumers of elective aesthetic surgeries. …