A study of petit cosmetic surgery practices for the middle-aged women in Taipei area

• Main Authors: Shi-Ji Li, 李思潔
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62902131183581656973

碩士 === 世新大學 === 性別研究所 === 98 === Many studies in the past aimed mostly at the female body of youth as the research object. Those researches seemed to reveal the worship to the youth overhanging within the society. Either the consumer culture or the media considers that being young is better than being aging. In the recent years, petit cosmetic surgery, also as known as "rejuvenation surgery", has being widely popular. Does the existence of such kind of operations imply the worship of the youth? In fact, those studies often overlooked significant opinions of the middle-aged and elder women's. Are they influnced by the same standard of appearance as the young does? What is the self-awareness of the body from the middle-aged women’s point of view? In this study, I focus on the middle-aged women and attempt to understand what those middle-aged women think about their own bodies. What are the differences and the similarities of the standards of appearances between the middle-aged women and the women in other ages? Additionally, based on the body disciplinary that Foucault described, I also try to comprehend the motives and the objectives of those women undertaking micro-plastic surgery by means of in-depth interviews. By collecting their reasons of undertaking micro-plastic surgery, this study would intensively discuss the subjectivity of the female body and the social structure of female body’s discipline. Besides, I also reconsider the concept of “body as a kind of capital”, inspired by Bourdieu, to understand how the middle-aged women learn to take their bodies as useful tools, and how they transform their own “capitals” through refashioning their bodies. Further, what kind of social resources can petit surgery help those users to earn? How do they perceive the relationship between micro-plastic surgery and their bodies? After obtaining information through the in-depth interviews, the researcher tries to analyze those interviews with grounded theory and to understand the unique bodily experiences of those middle-aged women participating in petit cosmetic surgery.