VI. Knives

Beauty thinking and conformity to beauty standards are part of the inversion of normalcy that Katherine Pauly Morgan discusses in her article “Women and the Knife.”
Morgan points to a disturbing phenomenon in the trends of current thinking about plastic surgery. She states:

Not only is elective cosmetic surgery moving out of the domain of the sleazy, the suspicious, the secretly deviant, or the pathologically narcissistic, it is becoming the norm. The shift is leading to a predictable inversion of the domains of the deviant and the pathological, so that women who contemplate not using cosmetic surgery will increasingly be stigmatized and seen as deviant...Cosmetic surgery entails the ultimate envelopment of the lived temporal reality of the human subject by technologically created appearances that are then regarded as ‘the real.’ Youthful appearance triumphs over aged reality (Morgan 148).

From Morgan’s observations, we realize that if trends in current thinking continue, plastic surgery will no longer be seen as an exception to the norm. Historically, women who have had tummy tucks, facelifts, or boob jobs have been ostracized by other women for trying to defy nature (Morgan 147). However, now that technology has become more available, women who feel dissatisfied with their appearances choose to surgically alter their bodies, thereby becoming activists in the fight against the ravages of aging and of nature (Morgan 149). Women who choose to age naturally in a dominant culture “which is male-supremacist, racist, ageist, heterosexist, anti-Semitic, ableist, and class-biased” (Morgan 156) will be seen as women who refuse to control themselves and refuse to take advantage of the identity in dominant culture that elective body surgery can offer them (Morgan 156). Increasingly, society will wonder “what is wrong with these women who choose to age naturally?” instead of “what is wrong with women who pump themselves full of silicone?”

Morgan asserts that the inversion of normalcy centers on an issue she terms the “paradox of choice” (Morgan 154). While women who get cosmetic surgery may appear to be taking charge of themselves, in reality they are conforming on a deeper level to societal standards of beauty (Morgan 155). Morgan states: “Women’s public conformity to the norms of beauty often signals a deeper conformity to the norms of compulsory hetersexuality along with an awareness of the violence that can result from violating those norms...What looks like an optimal situation of reflection, deliberation, and self-creating choice often signals conformity at a deeper level” (Morgan 155). Hence, a woman’s choice to alter herself surgically may appear to be an action by which she takes charge of her future and could be figured as very empowering.However, by choosing to “make the most of herself” she shows how greatly it matters to her how the “most of herself” appears and is perceived by others.

A woman’s choice for plastic surgery on her external genitalia is a great example of this paradox of choice. Genital plastic surgery signals conformity to dangerous standards of beauty and beauty thinking even more than a facelift or liposuction precisely because genital plastic surgery is done on a part of the body that is not generally open to public scrutiny. If women think such a minute excision will improve their relationships with men or their states of arousal, broader cultural forces must be provoking these responses; the problems are psychological, not physiological. Any man who would tease a woman because she had asymmetric labia minora or a mons pubis padded with fat is not worth energy or sexual intimacy. Men need to recognize the natural variety of labia, and more importantly, so do women. Direct confrontation of psychological deterrents to self-love is absolutely necessary.

Surgery on the external genitalia is the choice which most strongly asserts a woman’s conformity to beauty standards, not a choice which asserts a woman’s empowerment as her own person with a connected body and self. This illustrates the disjunction between a woman’s body and a woman’s self. The split between a woman’s body and self illustrates women’s fear that society will deem them morally worthless (Callaghan 115). Where do women get this fear which creates such a division within them? How does this fear relate specifically to a female’s desire to sculpt her genitalia so that it mirrors the elusive standard?