Selling genital cosmetic surgery to healthy women: a multimodal discourse analysis of Australian surgical websites

Abstract

The multimodal nature of web pages enables them to interweave text, images, colour and other graphical material to create discursive contexts which may be difficult to identify or challenge. Multimodal discourse analysis provides a tool for deconstructing such websites. This paper examines websites that promote the growing practice of female genital cosmetic surgery, in particular labial reduction or labiaplasty. We examine the ways in which four Australian cosmetic surgery websites normalise unnecessary surgical intervention. From our multimodal critical discourse analysis, three themes emerged – ‘pathologising the normal’, ‘normalising modification’ and ‘cosmetic surgery is easy’. All were embedded in a neoliberal discourse of individual choice, self-improvement and objectification, through text and images that medicalised normal women's bodies, normalised the use of surgery to fit a cultural ideal of beauty and stressed the rhetoric of choice, empowerment and agency, thus creating an ideological foundation and justification for cosmetic surgery.