Abstract
Wen Hua, in this book, explores the underlying complexity of the phenomenon of cosmetic surgery in the context of a globalizing China. First, Hua argues that women exercise agency in choosing to undergo cosmetic surgery within the power structure to improve their employment opportunities, obtain better jobs, procure a higher salary, and enhance their social status. Second, Hua contends that women’s altered bodies evince social stratification and social anxiety over their body image as well as competition for jobs, which is attributable to the current economic reform and social transitions in China. Third, Hua states that the consumption practice of cosmetic surgery and the rhetoric of individual freedom help solidify and strengthen state legitimacy that is built on consumerism and the discourse on choice. Fourth, Hua intimates that the image of women is made to reflect the image of a modern, globalized nation with Chinese cultural values. In a nutshell, Hua views women’s engagement in cosmetic surgery as an empowerment that is subsumed under the interests of the market, state, and men.
This book is based on a one-year fieldwork in Beijing. During the fieldwork, Hua employed participant observation at cosmetic surgery clinics and beauty salons. She also conducted interviews with 58 women who had chosen to undergo cosmetic surgery as well as a government official and six surgeons. The interviewees differed in social class, school education, age, and occupation. Due to a lack of statistical data, Hua also surveyed a wide array of the Chinese media to create a broader picture of Chinese women’s engagement in cosmetic surgery.
This book comprises four sections in addition to an Introduction and a Conclusion. In the first section, Hua traces the historical and cultural background of cosmetic surgery in China. Plastic surgery, introduced into China from the West during the early 20th century in Republican China, was modified and put into use in accordance with the Chinese social and political context during the Maoist era and contemporary China. Hua also depicts the ways in which debates about artificial beauty reflect a microcosm of the burgeoning cosmetic surgery industry in the course of China’s development.
In the second section, Hua investigates the reasons undergirding women’s choice of cosmetic surgery. More specifically, Hua discusses how women, faced with difficulties in the job market, workplace, and marriage market, strive to improve their appearance as a means of empowerment in these social spaces. Hua notes that this phenomenon is pervasive in the current era, irrespective of class. She provides three case studies of a laid-off woman, an upper-middle-class woman, and a rural migrant woman in the city to highlight the wide array of motivations behind the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery.
In the third section, Hua examines the ways in which women’s altered bodies embody personal pursuits as well as state and market forces. She shows that women’s desire to modify their bodies stems from the media, which extols ideal images produced by cosmetic surgery. Women are so entrenched in the media constructions of ideal beauty that consumption to approximate that ideal is an integral part of women’s lives.
In the fourth section, Hua argues that a tension between cultural homogenization and heterogenization in the era of globalization is manifested in beauty standards pursued through cosmetic surgery. Hua also shows how the import of Barbie from the West and pop culture from Korea impinge on the conception of ideal beauty. Double eyelids and fair skin reflect the contradiction between homogenization and heterogenization in the globalizing era.
In the concluding chapter, Hua argues that the burgeoning desire for cosmetic surgery in China is spawned by a confluence of factors at the transnational, national, and individual levels. Hua concludes that modified women’s bodies mirror China’s social transitions.
The Introduction, rather than highlighting the contributions of the book, provides an annotated bibliography that jumps from one author to the next, and from one text to the next. As a result, the literature review is fragmented and insufficiently linked, which makes the Introduction erratic and inconsistent. The book could have addressed the issue of whether the women were aware of their subjugation to state power, men, and the market. Nevertheless, this book will be welcomed by a wide array of scholars who have an interest in Chinese studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.