Cressida Connolly | 65 | such as cleft palates or | developed, but in why: what | ||||||||||
reviews | harelips. This trend Haiken | Venus Envy cries out for is conjecture. | |||||||||||
VENUS ENVY: A HISTORY OF | ascribes to two things; the evergreen | 7 | The most interesting passages | ||||||||||
COSMETIC SURGERY | desire for self-improvement | 140 | are gleaned from the writings | ||||||||||
by Elizabeth Haiken | enshrined within the | of social historians. Warren | |||||||||||
Johns Hopkins £20.50, | 70 | American way of life and, rather | Susman’s theory is particularly | ||||||||||
pp301 In 1936, | less probably, a mass collective | sound: that nineteenth-century | |||||||||||
adoption of psychoanalyst Alfred | values on ‘character’ gave way, | ||||||||||||
1 | In 1936, leading British plastic | Adler’s inferiority complex. | 145 | early this century, to an emphasis | |||||||||
surgeon Sir Harold Gillies | 4 | She has unearthed some | on ‘personality’ - in other | ||||||||||
was approached by a young | 75 | remarkable, disturbing findings. | words an onus on inner spiritual | ||||||||||
general surgeon who was | A chapter on ethnicity and cosmetic | qualities became replaced by | |||||||||||
5 | considering specialisation in | work reveals the alarming | outer magnetism and charm. As | ||||||||||
the discipline. ‘Really I do | statistic that in 1990 alone | 150 | society became more urbanised | ||||||||||
not think you have a chance, | 39,000 Asian patients in America | and competitive, the community | |||||||||||
my boy,’ he was told. ‘There | 80 | underwent operations to | was displaced by the individual. | ||||||||||
are four plastic surgeons in the | create Western-style ‘double | First impressions became a | |||||||||||
10 | country and I can’t think there | eyelids’. In the build-up to the | commodity. Then as now, good | ||||||||||
can be room for more.’ Sixty-odd | Vietnam war, scores of native | 155 | looks improved career prospects. | ||||||||||
years later, Sir Harold’s words | women had breast augmentations | (A pair of research economists | |||||||||||
seem almost comically misjudged: | 85 | in order to attract US servicemen | found, in 1993, that | ||||||||||
in Britain about 70,000 | posted in their country. | good looks improve earnings by | |||||||||||
15 | people a year now elect to | Perhaps most scandalous of all | 5 per cent, whatever the occupation.) | ||||||||||
undergo cosmetic procedures. | is the fact that - unknowingly - | 160 | Striving for physical improvement | ||||||||||
According to a recent report in | US tax-payers were, during the | thus became a valid | |||||||||||
the Times, some women - 90 | 90 | 1970s at least, contributing | part of the American dream. | ||||||||||
per cent of patients are female - | between $1 million and $6m | 8 | So much for the early days, | ||||||||||
20 | are now being given corrective | annually on free cosmetic operations | but Haiken does not address | ||||||||||
operations as Christmas presents: | for the wives of military | 165 | enough attention to the current | ||||||||||
Bupa hospitals say January | personnel. | state of cosmetic surgery: | |||||||||||
bookings for such treatments | 5 | 95 | Too much of this book is | although one chapter is called | |||||||||
are up by 15 per cent on | taken up with the ‘how’ of | The Michael Jackson Factor’, | |||||||||||
25 | last year. | cosmetic surgery. How the early | she makes no attempts to address | ||||||||||
2 | Venus Envy (great title) is a | surgeons organised themselves; | 170 | the bizarre psychology | |||||||||
timely history of this extraordinary | how liquid paraffin predated | which drives his bid for transfor- | |||||||||||
growth industry, which | 100 | silicone and eventually collagen | mation. The only conclusion | ||||||||||
focuses on its development in | as an implanting agent; how | she reaches is that Jackson | |||||||||||
30 | the author’s native America. | Barbra Streisand didn’t have a | suffers from self-hatred. She | ||||||||||
Haiken makes a convincing case | nose job, despite the vastness | 175 | could surely do better than this. | ||||||||||
for her belief that the discipline | of her snout, and how Michael | 9 | For a wider and more convin- | ||||||||||
was not, as is often thought, born | 105 | Jackson did, despite the modest | cing investigation into the American | ||||||||||
of advances in reconstructive | size of his.(Haiken’s admiration | obsession with youthfulness, | |||||||||||
35 | surgery deriving from injuries | for Streisand’s early rhinoplastic | readers will have to search | ||||||||||
sustained by soldiers in the First | restraint is boundless. The sing- | 180 | elsewhere. Robert Bly (scorned | ||||||||||
World War. While acknowledging | er is mentioned again and | creator of Iron John) has addressed | |||||||||||
that the war made cosmetic | 110 | again, in the warmest tones. | the issue in The Sibling | ||||||||||
surgery respectable - even | Odd, then, that the author has | Society, and many feminist commen- | |||||||||||
40 | heroic - she sets out to prove | not remarked on Streisand’s | tators, from Naomi Wolf’s | ||||||||||
that an interest in ‘beauty surgery’ | remarkable youthfulness, nor | 185 | The Beauty Myth onwards, continue | ||||||||||
predates 1917. | her fullness of upper lip and ski- | to question the mores | |||||||||||
3 | Haiken’s contention is that | 115 | slope straightness of nose. | which fuel the search for eternal | |||||||||
cosmetic surgery has always | Reassuring to note that, | youth. What does this mania for | |||||||||||
45 | tried to escape the charge of | even to the eye of a historian | youth and beauty say about a | ||||||||||
profiteering from vanity and insecurity | of facelifts, love remains | 190 | nation’s moral health? About the | ||||||||||
by medicalising itself. By | blind.) | value of sexual desire? About | |||||||||||
clinging to the idea that it was | 6 | 120 | Elizabeth Haiken is | the life of the soul? What worth | |||||||||
born from the noble cause of repairing | assistant professor of history | does a society with such superficial | |||||||||||
50 | the disfigurements of | at the University of Tennessee | preoccupations put on the | ||||||||||
brave servicemen, it lent itself | and a high level of scholarly | 195 | wisdom of age? What might be | ||||||||||
gravitas and respectability. The | and thorough research is every- | lost by forgoing senescence, | |||||||||||
treatment of burns with skin | 125 | where evident. This is not a | and might anything be gained? | ||||||||||
grafts following the Second | populist book. It reads like | 10 | These are the sort of questions | ||||||||||
55 | World War gave further weight to | a very well-written PhD thesis. | which anyone buying | ||||||||||
the by-product of cosmetic work. | The problem with such an approach, | 200 | Venus Envy will surely be | ||||||||||
But over the years, it has taken | though, is that cosmetic surgery | interested in. The pity is that | |||||||||||
hostages by pathologising flaws | 130 | is a populist subject. Much as | Elizabeth Haiken does not come | ||||||||||
that might properly be regarded | I rue the triumph of opinion over | closer to answering them. | |||||||||||
60 | as quite normal. Double chins, | knowledge which characterises so | |||||||||||
big noses, thin lips and drooping | much contemporary writing, this | ‘The Observer Review’, | |||||||||||
breasts have all come to be | book errs so far in the opposite | 205 | January 11, 1998 | ||||||||||
regarded as deformities; as | 135 | direction. The fascination of cosmetic | |||||||||||
deserving of correction as conditions | surgery lies not in how it |