Making the body beautiful: A cultural history of aesthetic surgery

Sep/Dec 2000 Reviews 65 but where the goals are those of Christianity—eternal salvation. Like shamans, the Converted undertake spiritual journeys, do spiritual work, and interact with spirits (the Holy Spirit). They use their powers to heal, guide, and prophesize, but unlike shamans, their performance is by a group (congregation), rather than an individual. Also unlike other shamans, they do not control spirits, but work with them. As an anthropologist, I am always interested in examining the broader human universals — what does it mean to be a human being? What is the range of our abilities and capacities? By studying similarities and differences in human experiences, we can begin to grasp that. Zane's book offers such insight into the human metaphysical experience. He feels that the shamanistic elements of the Converted religion arose independently and spontaneously, rather than through diffusion, and thus tell us more about human nature than historical circumstances. In the same chapter and in the same vein, he discusses spontaneous shamanism in relation to Silva Mind Control, Monroe's work with out-of-body experiences, and the work of several anthropologists including Hank Wesselman and Felicitas Goodman. He also likens the spiritual journeys of the Converted to lucid dreaming. I like very much that Zane writes in the first person, and frequently quotes from his field notes. That, along with his literary ability to create a vivid image, makes the reader feel that they are right there in St. Vincent's with him. I have always deplored the wall that most academic writers put up between themselves and their reading audience. It is as if, by writing in the third person, they can transform what is subjective data into something objective. Zane is part of the new breed of phenomenological researchers who recognize that this is futile, and present the researcher as instrument; he gives us some of his own personal background, so we, the readers, can assess the affect it might have on his observations. His book is thus an excellent reflection of the approach of the field of the Anthropology of Consciousness. Geri-Ann Galanti Anthropology Department Cal State University, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90032 [email protected] Making The Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. By Sander L. Gilman. 1999. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. $29.95 (cloth) The body has long been a source of anguish for its owner. It blemishes too easily, ages too quickly, and curves too much or too little. It tires when it should be alert, and it wimps out when it should be strong. Yet while it is the source of great anguish, it is also a source of great pride, passion, and pleasure. It lifts its owner to heights of sexual ecstasy, hurls its owner over the finish line of a 26 mile marathon, and lets its owner meditate at length, in some cases, for over one hundred years. In many cultures and for many centuries, bodies, with all of their plusses and minuses, have been the source of a vast variety of modification techniques. Of course, these techniques include variants of the piercing and tattooing so popular in 66 Anthropology of Consciousness [ 11 (3-4) J present day United States youth culture. In his new book, though, Sander Gilman shows us how plastic surgery (aesthetic surgery as he calls it), has been used for a variety of purposes across the globe to transform and extend the body and the consciousness of thousands of people. Gilman is a brilliant and prolific scholar, and holds positions in biology, Germanic studies, comparative literature, and psychiatry at the University of Chicago. The author of over 50 books, his style is as readable as it is erudite, and Gilman comfortably draws on canonical philosophers, Darwin, classic fiction, and the medical literature, as well as popular culture such as performance art and Michael Jackson. Gilman begins his book with a meditation on how people judge other people based upon appearances. In a section on passing, Gilman discusses techniques that many racial minorities and physically disabled individuals have employed to reduce what are seen as stigmatized conditions in the eyes of the majority. Via surgery or careful dress, people have long manipulated categories such as hairy/bald, fat/thin, large nose/small nose, and small breasted/large breasted in order to fit in with socially desirable categories. Of course, such categories vary with the time and place. For example, in some societies being fat is associated with prosperity, while in the present day United States it is often associated with laziness. Later, Gilman explores criminality and appearance, discussing the so-called Chicago "ugly laws" which fined "unsightly" people in public places (the code was repealed in 1974). Gilman also elegantly weaves discussions of Humphrey Bogart's face-changing character in the film Dark Passage and psychologist Alfred Adler's inferiority complex theory into the tapestry of his argument that outward physical appearance, in society's eyes at least, often reflects inner moral value. Another chapter details the uses of aesthetic surgery to combat disease. In particular, Gilman examines the use of aesthetic surgery to combat the destruction of the nose due to syphilis. This sexually transmitted disease often carried such negative moral connotations for a patient that a patient would go to great lengths to try to conceal that he suffered from the illness. The reader is treated to numerous fascinating graphics in this chapter; in fact, peppered throughout the book are glorious photographs of every sort, including photos and drawings of medical conditions, stills from films, and cartoons. In part comical, in part tragic, Gilman describes the humorous looking artificial noses available in the Renaissance as well as the surgical treatments available today. Clearly, this sort of disfigurement was taken very seriously by the patient, medical establishment, and society, as much effort was spent to attempt to establish a cure or treatment that would allow the sufferer to have the appearance that the nose was never damaged to begin with. Intertwining examples from Alcott's Little Women, Stern's Tristram Shandy, and Voltaire's Candide, the author shows how the syphilitic nose is a public display of moral failure, and how consciousness of this deficit in body (and spirit) led patients to seek desperate cures. The early artificial noses were not without problems. As G ilman notes, "if one blew too hard it might fall off. Young women with reconstructed noses were not exactly objects of desire" Gilman also tackles the difficult problem of racism and racial physiognomy. A chapter dedicated to the topic describes Enlightenment thinking gone awry as Sep/Dec 2000 Reviews 67 thinkers began measuring racial differences in body structures, but then ascribing moral import to them as well. Gilman focuses particularly on the Jewish and the Irish nose, and "Oriental" noses and eyes. In this sad but informative chapter, Gilman also discusses the surgical and cosmetic procedures entailed in passing from black to white at the close of the nineteenth century in the United States. Even when one's skin was light enough to pass, hair straightening, further skin lightening, and plastic surgery of the nose were common. The widespread popularity of such "remedies" is evident in the fact that Madame C. J. Walker became the first African-American millionaire by selling products designed to straighten hair and lighten skin. A brief but insightful discussion notes the trends in aesthetic surgery of this type through the various political climates of the early twentieth century, the sixties, and the present day. As is common in other societies, political consciousness is often transformed into a new sort of body consciousness as well. A chapter on body markers as signs of honor and dishonor notes the frequent use of body differences in history to discriminate one group from another. This neophrenological technique has been employed by racists of the most evil variety, including Hitler, who, convinced Stalin was Jewish, ordered photographs of him analyzed to see whether or not his earlobes were "ingrown and Jewish, or separate and Aryan." A discussion of the foreskin and its circumcision and reconstitution is informative and touches on historical and religious debates surrounding circumcision, as well as on the modern debate in the U.S. concerning whether or not circumcision offers any medical benefits- one unsupported claim in Gilman's view is the claim that circumcision leads to lowered rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Later chapters include a chapter on "noses at war," which looks primarily at developments during W.W. I and W.W. II, a chapter on assimilation in the "promised lands," which examines aesthetic surgery and immigration to the U.S. and to Israel, a chapter on erotic bodies, which details surgery on buttocks, bellies, and breasts, a chapter on transsexual surgery (not for the squeamish), and a chapter on aging. The later chapters bring this cultural history current to the present day, with discussions of breast implants, mastectomy surgery, and the nip and tuck surgery popular with aging film stars. The reader even learns of a performance artist who views her plastic surgery as her art. At the end of the book, Gilman asks, "After surgery becomes art, art becomes surgery. What more is left to imagine?" Gilman feels that the central issue in aesthetic surgery is the desire to pass, and that "when we turn to the physician we demonstrate our autonomy and abdicate it simultaneously." This tantalizing dilemma serves as fuel for both our hopes and our fears as we contemplate changes in consciousness in our bodies, our minds, and ourselves. Grant Jewell Rich Bates College 35 Wood Street, apt. 8B Lewisiton, ME 04240 [email protected]