Historical transformations of aesthetic surgery as a normalization apparatus. The case of rhinoplasty

Abstract

In this article I develop a historical interpretation of aesthetic surgery as a normalizing technology of body appearance. The argument I present holds that the normalization apparatus of aesthetic surgery operated according to a homogenizing rationality until the middle of the past century, undergoing since the second post-war a reconfiguration process which nowadays established it as an individualizing regime. I illustrate this argument by considering the changing cultural meaning and value that the experience of rhinoplasty received along this period. The method I employ is the comparative analysis of two texts produced in different historical conditions: first, Transformation and Identity. The Face and Plastic Surgery (1974), by the American anthropologist Frances Cooke Macgregor; secondly, Hacerse. El viaje de una mujer en busca de la cirugía perfecta (2010), by the Argentine journalist Daniela Pasik.