Literature-Media Review

Elaine Frost
November 16, 2009
TA: Sung Choon Park
Literature/Media Review Assignment

Media Representation of Plastic Surgery in Reality Television Shows

I have long had a fascination with plastic surgery with an emphasis on its representation than perhaps its reality. While I could never imagine going under the knife, I find other women’s narratives extremely intriguing as they happily endure an experience I still find myself perplexed by, no matter how many plastic surgery reality television shows I watch. I am confused regarding the procedure’s realness (since events on television are always a mediated distilled, representation), I am confused regarding these shows’ popularity (and growing number of other copycat versions), and I am extremely curious as to what the effects are from the proliferation of such images in popular culture. In reading various articles regarding the topic of plastic surgery and its portrayal in reality TV shows, I found the following nuances: reality TV plastic surgery and its association with cyborgs, reality TV plastic surgery and its relation to Foucault and/or Baudrillard, reality TV plastic surgery and power, and plastic surgery’s place in reality TV shows as a new area of research for the purpose of examining culture.
Surgery Reality TV as a Means for Examining Culture
In “Editing as Plastic Surgery: The Swan and the Violence of Image-Creation,” Kimberly Jackson discusses how makeover shows has become a new genre in television for the purpose of popular culture studies (Jackson 55). Jackson links FOX’s reality show The Swan with the “feminine compulsion toward imitation […] which has always been intimately connected to technologies of mass production,” in particular with today’s “current obsession with plastic surgeries intent of mimicking ‘ideal’ forms” (Jackson 56). Jackson makes the interesting point that “what makes the experience of viewing the show significant for an understanding of the culture that consumes it […] is the fact that the inevitable emptying of its (female) contestants by the ruthless editing process coincides with the flat experience of the viewing audience to such a degree as to create an unprecedented intimacy between viewer and viewed” (Jackson 57). The “flat” aspect to which she refers is the show’s structure, which leaves out large portions of the surgery, the recuperation process, and the psychic after effects. Because the audience’s viewing experiences is so “flat,” the show’s structure ultimately seizes what power she might have had from her makeover since so much of her struggle is left on the cutting room floor (Jackson 57). Since “the link between the physical transformation involved in plastic surgery and the public image or persona is thus undeniable,” (Jackson 59) Jackson claims it is unavoidable that other women “would wish to appropriate these technologies for herself” (Jackson 60). Indeed, Jackson claims, this has already been done as reality TV shows involving plastic surgery has inspired “a surgical movement so profound it has crossed over all socioeconomic classes, genders, sexual orientations, and other categories” (Jackson 60).
In “An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery,” Brenda Weber essentially ties three books (Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture; Meredith Jones’s Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery; and Cressida Heyes’s Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies) together in an effort to demonstrate their value in perceiving reality TV plastic surgery shows as a medium through which to study culture:
And each, I believe, succeeds in offering a useful and intelligent reading of plastic surgery as a cultural practice that speaks of and shapes our present contemporary moment, in which image functions as indexical to identity. Because all three authors offer extended readings of Extreme Makeover, commenting on television’s role in making body modification practices intelligible…(Weber 289).
She notes that analyzing these three books together unveils certain patterns about reality TV makeover shows such as the increase in empathy viewers experience with participants of these shows versus real actors and how such shows make real-life surgery less nerve-racking, endurable process:
This way of treating surgery makes television a ‘cultural anesthetic through which we experience virtual surgery, making that small step to real surgery a bit easier,’ even while plastic surgery is ‘associated with hard work and sacrifice’” (53).
Perhaps this explanation also gives reason for the increase in such shows and in the practice of the surgery itself? While Weber admits that the increasing number of these shows is culturally significant she does warn, however, that these shows are merely mediated representations and should not stand for the reality that is real life: “Although clearly television influences real people and reality TV showcases the stories of real people, it is important that we remember these are aesthetic narratives, representations of the real” (Weber 298).
Julie Albright’s article “Impossible Bodies: TV Viewing Habits, Body Image, and Plastic Surgery Attitudes among College Students in Los Angeles and Buffalo, New York” was overall the most quantified analysis of the articles I reviewed. In the article, Albright details a survey conducted regarding dissatisfied body image and its connection to viewing plastic surgery makeover shows (Albright 118). The survey’s results showed that more women than men watch such shows, those who watched more of these kinds of shows had increased “anxiety about their bodies” compared to those who watched fewer, and women were more likely than men to say that participants were considered more beautiful after their surgeries (Albright 118). Of the 662 participants, only five said they would apply to participate in such shows. All five were from L.A. Albright suggests that the proliferation of plastic surgery in L.A. (compared to Buffalo) and the higher median parental income in L.A. (making such a surgery more easily attainable) were possible explanations as to why these five were all from L.A. Those from Buffalo seemed to be more affected by these shows making them the location which had higher body image dissatisfaction:
This is an important finding, in that it suggests that higher consumption of shows specific to ‘beautification’ through plastic surgery may encourage heightened self-scrutiny among lower-class viewers. Watching more plastic-surgery reality TV and thus being exposed to more thin, worked out, and surgically enhanced models may also be contributing to western New Yorkers’ “beauty anxiety,” leading them to more often seek reassurance about their disliked feature from others, to feel more worried about their disliked feature in public and social settings, and to become more upset when someone notices or comments on it, compared to Angelenos (Albright 119).
These results are extremely telling in that they defy previous research and sociologist’s Pierre Bordieu’s framework which says that “working-class women are much less aware than those of higher classes of the value of beauty, and thus are less likely to invest ‘time and effort, sacrifices and money in cultivating their bodies’ (Albright 118). Continuing to discern the survey’s results in context to Bordieu, Albright assumes this part of New York is undergoing a “class transition via educational attainment” making them unable to look toward their “habitus” as a role model and, instead, looking to these frequently-watched shows for new role models (Albright 119). Since having plastic surgery is a sign of being able to afford plastic surgery, then these lower class (in comparison to L.A.) Buffalo college students see this type of surgery as a class signifier:
The desire for social mobility may explain why one of the fast-growing segments of the plastic-surgery market is working-class women, as plastic surgery becomes more available and affordable to them via the increased visibility of plastic surgery in the media, coupled with an increase in financing options – including lenders specializing in plastic surgery financing, free financing, and major credit cards being accepted by surgeons (Albright 123).
Using this survey on specifically cosmetic surgery TV show viewership and body dissatisfaction to gauge changed in culture means the beginning of more accurate, specific research. Although previous studies have been done on media and body dissatisfaction, this survey delved into a more specific, more telling niche in media. If Buffalo, New York is at a point of cultural transition at it alienates its habitus as a pillar of guidance for one’s lifestyle – perhaps, then, other locations nationwide are also doing the same?
Plastic Surgery’s Media Presence and Postmodernism

In Mark Poster’s article “Swan’s Way: Care of Self in the Hyperreal,” Poster focuses on the shows ABC’s Extreme Makeover, MTV’s I Want a Famous Face, FOX’s The Swan reality TV shows. Poster concentrated on these three because “these reality TV series of cosmetic surgery […] exemplify a form of media culture that carries Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal to new levels and illustrates a landscape of hitherto unimaginable combinations of humans and information machines” (Poster 153). Additionally Poster goes on to relate these three shows to Foucault’s notions of the “care of self” and the “hermeneutics of the subject” (Poster 153) as well.
Poster starts with the observation that “The Swan presents a puritanical code to the contestants: they are being judged by how well they conform to the regimen imposed by the experts” (Poster 156). Basically, the “winners” of these shows are not the women who turn out to be the most beautiful; instead the winners are those who the audience deems has struggled the most for “personal redemption” (Poster 156) via cosmetic surgeries. Despite audiences feeling as though they have witnessed each participant’s full spectrum of struggle, Poster claims that “what might appear to be ‘reality’ remains televised hyppereality” (Poster 162) because the reality in these shows is “heavily mediated” (Poster 163). Therefore viewers are not getting the dose of reality they think they are. Through these shows, and through the “integration between culture and technology […] humans are now […] ‘chimerical cocktails,’ or ‘living chimeras, strange mixtures of man and machine’” (Poster 164). But why do people subject themselves to becoming such creatures?
Poster’s article asserts that they are merely participating in Foucault’s idea of “the care of self” since it involves personal “emancipation endeavors” which can include cosmetic surgery (Poster 166): “The relation one has with oneself is neither narcissism nor self-indulgence, but the ‘first or final point of resistance to political power’” (Poster 167). In Poster’s view the care of self is merely a mode of cultural resistance (Poster 167):
The surgeries may be interpreted as new modes of care of self both for the participants and for the audience. The shows validate and legitimize an ethic of self-transformation in an age of mediated culture, one certainly different from that of the Hellenistic era discussed by Foucault, but one perhaps more consonant with a time when information machines are in a new relation with humans (Poster 172).
While previously the experience of publicly going from an ugly duckling to a swan would have been mortifying, “the care of self now requires information machines for its fulfillment” (Poster 173), and in using such machines people are no longer “actualizing themselves, achieving their ‘true’ identity, but [are instead] exploring possibilities of personhood in the age of information machines” (Poster 175).
Plastic Surgery and Power
When researching the phenomenon of plastic surgery reality television shows, I wondered – in general – why is the trend of surgically augmenting oneself so popular that it warrants a plethora of TV shows dedicated to the practice? Who started this trend: was it a grassroots movement or did it trickle down from the surgeons and biotechnology companies themselves in an effort to popularize the procedure to make more money?
In Bradley Lewis’ article “Newsweek Magazine and the Circuits of Medical Culture,” he argues that it is popular culture that is the driving force. Lewis used a health and technology issue of Newsweek magazine to demonstrate how modern-day, popular influences are “deeply problematic” (Lewis 363) for the medical community, pressuring them to adhere to popular demands (i.e. bigger breasts, modern veneers, rhinoplasties, etc.). Lewis uses the Newsweek magazine to analyze the way in which drugs and medical procedures are represented in a popular magazine. He concludes that only “through an appreciation of the dynamics of culture [can] medical humanities scholars” begin to unify for the purpose of overcoming “the struggle over medical culture” (Lewis 363). To make this case, Lewis takes the reader through the cultural studies’ circuit of culture (production, representation, etc.) in context to the medical community. While Lewis’ article is a bit broad, the process of medical technologies and its path through the circuit of culture is most certainly relevant to plastic surgery since its media portrayal (and therefore consumption) is not all that different from Lewis’ biotechnology and its path through the circuit of culture:
During production, ‘symbolic vehicles constituted within the rules of ‘language’ are released as forms of representation for circulation and consumption into the circuits of culture. Production encodes these circulating artifacts with the frames of reference embedded in the producer’s local practices and technical skills: ‘professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, assumptions about the audience, and so on.’ This connection between production and representation is perhaps the most crucial insight of postmodern theory (Lewis 366).
Basically Lewis concludes that the medical community bends to popular culture: “A postmodern perspective does not argue that the science and ethics of these producers are false or bad, only that they are malleable in the direction of powerful interests” such as media are (Lewis 372).
In William Egginton’s “The Best or the Worse of our Nature: Reality TV and the Desire for Limitless Change,” Egginton argues that viewers hold the power as they have “become the agency of domination” in relation to reality TV (Egginton 182).
Because the phenomenon of reality television involves the “display of self, be it in its progressive modification or in its prior deficiency, is still a display and hence a giving over of the self to the view of others” (Egginton 182) which in turn signifies the acquiescing of power by reality TV show participants. In the “display of self” in cosmetic surgery reality TV, the audience is shown two “selves.” This display causes a paradox where the viewer is presented with the same person as two different people in the “before” and “after” (Egginton 190) without much time having passed in the in-between causing a “normal” personal sense to be one of “self-in-change” not of self-identity (Egginton 190). Egginton, too, examined FOX’s The Swan and from it he observed that it – and other makeover TV shows – advertise the ability for a “changeless self as the very justification and agent of the desire for the limitless change” (Egginton 191). He claims these shows do wrongly by the viewer since limitless change is, in reality, not an option despite what these shows propose (Egginton 191). Ultimately these shows yield only losers as the participants hand their identity – and therefore their personal power – over to viewers while viewers are led to believe these participants are part of a real world in which bodies are subject to ultimate malleability in the face of the fear of not being able to change at all.
In Virginia Blum’s “Becoming the Other Woman” The Psychic Drama of Cosmetic Surgery,” Blum researches the narratives mediated realities (i.e. The Swan, Extreme Makeover, etc.) fail to convey. Her article also slightly touches on the notion of women being self-subjugators.
While her article only briefly discusses plastic surgery and reality TV shows, her key findings are still interesting in the discourse surrounding plastic surgery as a reality television phenomenon. She interviewed thirty-nine surgeons from various regions in the United States about cosmetic surgery, only two happened to be women. She also interviewed eleven patients, only two of whom happened to be men. Following these interviews she concludes that these narratives explain how women consume plastic surgery (ideally via television and in actuality through surgery) for the means of a “becoming the Other Woman ” with whom every single woman is in competition (Blum 107): “Cosmetic surgery can be seen as a dramatization of the relationship between a woman and an imaginary Other Woman figure, the perennial rival with whom girls are taught to compete the moment they know and care about what it means to be pretty” (Blum 110). Women are “taught” this envy via the images portrayed in the media and the myths women spread to other women regarding female sexuality. Blum’s article becomes even more relevant to my topic-in-question when she briefly sums up the conception of reality TV makeover shows like The Swan and Extreme Makeover:
The interaction of a capitalist competitive model with the dynamic of female rivalry has changed the shape of that rivalry. The beauty contest within postindustrial society significantly differs from that archetypal beauty contest where Paris decided in favor of sexual gratification by choosing Venus over Hera and Athena. The contemporary contest has put beautiful body parts on the assembly line of sexual fantasy, whose built-in system of interchangeability is not only necessary to the buying and selling of beauty, but renders its purchase evanescent (Blum 112).
Through this insight, Blum acknowledges that it is women versus women who have marginalized female sexuality so much so that these shows have surfaced and have becoming overwhelmingly popular – among women of course. While her article does not answer this question it surely raises it, “Are women their own subjugators?”
Pamela Orosan-Weine’s article “The Swan: The Fantasy of Transformation versus the Reality of Growth,” also acknowledges notions of power in relation to cosmetic surgery reality TV shows. Weine describes the pattern in which such shows – specifically The Swan – have a positive effect in that they inspire participants to change, however this change only comes when participants are recognized by others which in turn leaves participants with less personal power than they might assume they hold. Weine says participants’ personal power and agency only arise when participants are acknowledged by the “other” – in this case the TV experts and audiences (Weine 20). For participants, The Swan “and its recognition, provides for them the sense of being seen, being recognized, and being responded to” (Weine 21). Such recognition initially includes attention from the show’s “experts” including doctors, trainers, dermatologists, etc. who continually meet with participants until their transformation:
These seemingly simple actions, of being recognized and attended to, begin to mobilize these women to become active agents on their own behalf […and…] this developing bond between the contestant and the experts and the viewers is the fuel by which the contestants become attached to themselves and gain the confidence to begin their transformation. (Weine 21).
Weine notes that the women who usually apply to be part of The Swan are women with “unfortunate life histories” (Weine 32). These participants are women who have put their families and jobs first while prioritizing themselves last (Weine 21). Being catered to and being “helped by others seems to fuel the contestants’ investment in themselves and appears to restimulate the developmental process of growth that had stalled out for them” (Weine 32). Provoking change it may, however, The Swan also has its degrading aspects besides usurping personal agency as stated above. It also depersonalizes participants’ makeovers as “each contestant looks more and more like a Barbie doll, with exceedingly long, straight hair extension, excessive breast augmentations, plumped-up lips, and very high heels” (Weine 30). This depersonalization ultimately makes The Swan a mere showcase of surgeons’ technical capabilities instead of a mode of altruistic inspiration for personal change on more than just a physical level (Weine 30).
Plastic Surgery and Cyborg Associations
In Bernadette Wegenstein’s “Getting Under the Skin, or, How Faces Have Become Obsolete,” Wegenstein reinforces how discourse surrounding the fragmented body has become an outdated discourse (Wegenstein 222). Wegenstein gives the background of how, for centuries, bodies have been talked about in “fragmented” ways, in which the one part of the body being discussed/viewed stood for the whole in a synecdochic fashion. For years it had been the face that stood for the whole body, however in this “era of posthumanity,” (Wegenstein 234), the face is no longer used in media leaving other body parts (i.e. a leg, arm, etc.) to act as the “faciality” for the body making the face, head, and brain merely an accessory (Wegenstein 235): “Beauty discourse has penetrated the inner body, where our real capital is hidden: our organs, our blood, our DNA” (Wegenstein 234). Beauty products now use images and rhetoric similar to that of invasive cosmetic surgery along with other advertisements and media. By focusing on the internal we de-humanize the human form as it gradually becomes face-less: “We might then be able to hypothesize that the erasure of the face could be seen as precursor of an erasure that affects human corporeality as such [and] by navigating interior corporeal spaces, indeed, similarities between humans, animals, and machines become much clearer and are no longer ‘disturbed’ by the codes of visibility” (Wegenstein 237). In the end humans become less human when body discourse/representation does not involve our exterior, bodily identifications it has long been associated:
This kind of redefinition of similarities and, as a result, of categories that demarcate humanness from animalness, or humans from machines, can only be understood culturally through the rhetoric of ‘getting under the skin’ and getting rid of faces and other such overcoded markers of humanness (Wegenstein 237).
As our “humanness” deteriorates – in media – as a readily associative quality for the human body, Wegenstein posits that humans become cyborgs in lieu of being human. While Wegenstein mostly focuses on advertisements in her essay, this cyborg association is eerily relatable to participants’ bodies – and therefore all human bodies – as being comparable to cyborgs – a correlation all too frightening in its science fiction connotations. Wegenstein’s deteriorating “humanness” is very similar to Anne Jerslev’s “The Mediated Body: Cosmetic Surgery in Television Drama, Reality Television and Fashion Photography.” In her article, Jerslev analyzes episodes of reality television: ABC's “Extreme Makeover” and FOX's “The Swan,” as well as the drama “Nip Tuck” and a series of fashion photographs titled “Makeover Madness” from an Italian Vogue's 2005 issue. Jerslev finds that reality television shows have played a significant role in normalizing plastic surgery to an extreme point of reinforcing that the physical “natural” body is without transformational limitations. The portrayal of plastic surgery in such shows ultimately encourage consumers of these visuals to think these surgeries are always speedy, augmenting Wegenstein’s notion that media now reinforce the deterioration of the body’s “humanness” as its limits become limitless.
What’s Missing and What I Intend to Research
While some articles discussed the gender makeup of these shows, most of the articles failed to touch on the racial and age makeup. I would like to further research the socio-economic backgrounds of participants. Having noticed (from watching the shows myself) that mostly white, young people are chosen as participants, I feel this must somehow affect the viewers who consume these shows. What does this trend say about men and public plastic surgery? What does this trend say about the topic of inclusion? It might also be important to include how these surgeries politicize the body and how that relates to Foucault’s notions of the political body.










Works Cited
Albright, Julie M. “Impossible Bodies: TV Viewing Habits, Body Image, and Plastic Surgery Attitudes among College Students in Los Angeles and Buffalo, New York.” Configurations, 2007, vol. 15, pp.103–123.
Blum, Virginia. “Becoming the Other Woman: The Psychic Drama of Cosmetic Surgery.” Frontiers, 2005, vol. 26 no. 2, pp. 104-131.
Egginton, William. “The Best or the Worse of our Nature: Reality TV and the Desire for Limitless Change.” Configurations, 2007, vol. 15, pp.177–191.
Jackson, Kimberly. “Editing as Plastic Surgery: The Swan and the Violence of Image Creation,” Configurations, 2007, vol. 15. pp. 55–76.
Jerslev, Anne. “The Mediated Body: Cosmetic Surgery in Television Drama, Reality Television and Fashion Photography.” Nordicom Reivew, vol. 27 no. 2, pp. 133-151.
Lewis, Bradley. “Newsweek Magazine and the Circuits of Medical Culture,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2007, vol. 50 no. 3, pp. 363–78.
Orosan-Weine, Pamela. “The Swan: The Fantasy of Transformation versus the Reality of Growth.” Configurations, 2007, vol.15, pp. 17–32.
Poster, Mark. “Swan’s Way: Care of Self in the Hyperreal.” Configurations, 2007, vol. 15. pp. 151–175.
Weber, Brenda. “An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 2009 vol. 37, pp. 289-299.
Wegenstein, Bernadette.“Getting Under the Skin, or, How Faces Have Become Obsolete.” Configurations, 2002, vol.10, pp. 221–259.