Response to Susan Bordo’s “Material Girl; The Effacement of Postmodern Culture”

Images of Plastic surgery..... and their effects on society.

Bordo states in her article that women are never really happy just being themselves, thus we change everything we can to make ourselves look and feel better because of specific ideologies of how our culture believes women should look. Our society is alarmingly undergoing procedures to change everything from our faces, our breasts to the amount of fat in our thighs and even the way our aged hands look. America has turned into a country where we are obsessed with looking perfect. An image determined by elitist and historical viewpoints on how women should look. The hegemonic standard place on mostly women has changed from each generation, whether wearing corsets to appear shapely to looking homely in dresses and high heels, to the Greek Goddess. Each generation through time has created specific standards on how women should appear.
Now our society has taken it one step further and included plastic surgery as a way of achieving acceptance. Bordo’s proof is that even Madonna, the once radical feminist and curve loving superstar changed her ideas and her appearance after she stated she accepted the way she looked because she did not believe that being anorexic thin was an appropriate way to promote herself. Though the Pop star has been widely known to take on new personas and become a chameleon at reinvention she has forced herself to continually change in order to preserve her marketability rate. By changing her image and by becoming a muscularly toned female she not only contradicted her earlier statements but made herself challenge the very beliefs she once represented.
New examples where the media has promoted the idea of plastic surgery is television shows such as “Nip Tuck, Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and 90210” Each show focuses on the ideas that the patient is undergoing specific procedures to fix something about themselves that inflicts unhappiness within themselves. By plasticizing themselves they are not fixing themselves from within but trying to fit a societal standard that will fix the identity they are seeking to fulfill. The question then remains can one fix things about their identities to in order to sooth the insecurities within their psyche? Is it possible to cut and paste ourselves into an identity we are more willing to accept or are we avoiding deeper psychological issues?