ARTICLE BY- Sue Tait
INTRODUCTION:
Today, there are a number of reality series on television which make over “ordinary” people. Two such US produced shows are Extreme Makeover and Nip/Tuck. Extreme Makeover aired from 2002 to 2005 was the most successful of television’s surgical reality shows and Nip/Tuck which was on air from 2003 was the first drama series about cosmetic surgery.
This article by Sue Tait throws light on how cosmetic surgery advertised in television shows have played a major role in changing the thinking of women. There are celebrities out there on television, having had a number of cosmetic surgeries to their “imperfect” body part, who influence viewers thinking to a great extent. Feminists believe that women now think that a physical transformation is the route to happiness and personal empowerment.
These television programmes domesticate cosmetic surgery by advertizing its positive effects and showing how these surgeries can change one’s unaesthetic looks into an appealing character. People who are not interested in altering their imperfect body parts are also pulled into this industry.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer’s work (2006, page 257) on surgical reality television identifies post-feminism as the logic which shows “where a celebration of the body, the pleasure of transformation, and individual empowerment function as a justification for a renewed objectification of female bodies.”
According to researches by Jeffreys, Morgan, Sullivan and Wolf, cosmetic surgery is dangerous
Many scholars like Bordo, Davis, Gagne & McGaughey, Gillespie, Padmore and Woodstock examine the desire for surgery and the natural contradiction that giving in to hegemonic standards of beauty enables the experience of liberation.
Davis argues that cosmetic surgery is not about subscribing to popular standards of beauty, but about performing a more coherent identity. It is about