My boss’s sister just had cosmetic surgery done on her nose and mouth. She was born with cleft palate and her nose and upper lip were flat, her lower lip protruded. She had surgery 15 years ago, which corrected part of it. Last week she went back and the surgeon fixed her nose and lip.

To me, she looked fine, not “freakish” as she felt. But I don’t think she was “not sane” for going through the surgery. She feels normal. I can understand how she feels, except my “freakishness” can be fixed without surgery. Of course, my solutions haven’t exactly been healthy. I can see your point, though, Lea.

I used to watch the “Trauma” show and I can’t even begin to imagine being a surgeon. Just watching the images on TV creeped me out so I can see why you would feel that someone going voluntarily into surgery would not be “sane”. I certainly don’t want anyone near me with any type of scalpel.Sadly I think it all comes down to MONEY. Doctors can make loads of money performing surgeries and so aren’t gonna question that as a disorder.

Likewise they can make loads of money treating eating disordered people so yep of course are gonna recognize that as a disorder and encourage treatment. In some cases surgery may be justified but in many cases yep I think such surgery could be considered on par with an eating disorder.

Elizabeth Haiken delivers much more than the subtitle of her book implies: not just a history of a medical specialty but an intelligent, perceptive, and very lively analysis of 20th-century American culture and values as reflected in the rise of cosmetic surgery. Self-improvement is an American obsession. Up through the 19th century, Americans defined it @only in terms of character development and “inner beauty.”

By the beginning of the 20th century, though, the rapid growth of the commercial beauty business had made the means of external self-improvement available to women everywhere. Looking one’s best was seen as part of America’s democratic tradition of self-improvement – or, as one contemporary writer put it, “of decent respect for oneself, of optimistic belief in one’s heritage of beauty and a desire to come into one’s own.” As Haiken makes clear, cosmetic surgery, which lies at the nexus of medicine and consumer culture, found an ideal time and place to thrive in modern America.

The first successful cosmetic surgery on record took place in the 16th century, when an Italian surgeon reconstructed a man’s nose, which had been severed in a brawl, using skin from the patient’s upper arm. But cosmetic surgery wouldn’t emerge as a medical specialty until World War I, when British, American, and French doctors worked together to develop techniques to repair the shattered faces of soldiers.

By the 1920s, cosmetic surgery had a hold on the imagination of the American public, thanks in large part to the efforts of journalists, who, then as now, were fascinated by its possibilities. In 1923, the famous Jewish comedian Fanny Brice submitted to a much-publicized nose bob in hopes that it would enable her to play a wider range of roles. “Hurrah for the intrepid Fanny,” The New York Times editorialized. (Writer Dorothy Parker, @also Jewish, saw it differently, commenting that Brice had “cut off her nose to spite her race.”)