What makes a woman’s body beautiful? Plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery and non-surgical interventions such as Botox are changing women’s bodies physically and affecting cultural notions and expectations of what it means to be a woman. Yet where does the law stand? Is the renovation of women’s bodies legal? This book explores a range of topics, including: whether shape-changing by surgical and non-surgical means is ‘really’ what women want; the question of legal intervention when operations, injections and other methods go wrong; the impact of consent determinations on whether women can or cannot freely seek changes to their body structure; and the role which culture and social expectations play in women’s decision-making. Taking a legal perspective on the vast range of ‘beauty’ interventions available to women, Scutt discusses women’s perceptions of body and beauty, pressures on women to conform to ‘idealised’ notions of the perfect woman’s body, and outcomes of legal actions including those taken by individual women who are unhappy with results, as well as those launched against companies trading in products advertised as safe and for women’s benefit.
Beauty, Women’s Bodies and the Law will appeal to readers with an interest in women’s and gender studies, law, and cultural studies.
Author(s): Jocelynne A. Scutt
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 395
City: Cham
Contents
1 Introduction—The Body Plastic
1 Brain & Body, Brain vs Body
2 The Body Perfect/Imperfect
3 The Body as Image
4 My Body, Your Opinion
5 The Body as ‘I’
2 The Body Beneath the Knife
1 The Body in the Beauty Parlour
2 The Body on the Operating Table
3 The Criminal Body and the Body in Crime
4 The Criminal, the Civil and the Role of the Law
3 Above the Shoulder Blades
1 Her Crowning Glory
2 Oh! My Face … a Retroussé Nose & Pinned Ears
3 Around the Eyes & Rounded Eyes …
4 For Bee-Stung Lips, Whiter-Than-White Teeth, Receding Chins & Measures Under the Neck
5 Plastic Faces or ‘The New Normal’?
4 All Above the Waist
1 Over and Above the Bosom
2 Bust, Bosom, Breasts …
3 Reclaiming Our Bodies, Our Selves—Beginning with Breasts & Chests
5 Below the Belt and Under the Waist …
1 Muffin Top Madness
2 Around the Fatty Abdomen
3 Within the Fatty Abdomen
4 What Lies Beneath …
5 Bad Body Hair … Comes Good?
6 Our Rounded Bits …
1 Rounding Up vs Rounding Down
2 The Bottom as Bustle …
3 Bottoms, Hips, Thighs …
4 Exposing My Midriff or Where Are My Abs?
5 Suction Up, Suction Down
7 Extremities: From the Tips of Her Fingers to the Tips of Her Toes
1 The Moons of My Nails, O’er My Elegant Hands …
2 Upon Raising Her Arms to the Sky
3 From My Elbows to the Bush Within My Armpits
4 Legs, Knees, Ankles & Feet …
5 Feet, Ankles, Knees & Legs …
6 To the Tips of Her Toes—
7 Fingers, Hands, Nails, Toes—The Extremities That Count
8 Conclusion: Beyond the Body …
1 Recovering the Body …
2 My Body, My Self—
Bibliography
Index
