Barometer for Beauty: How Cosmetic Surgery Websites Define and Visualize “What Is Beautiful”

Abstract

The present study investigated visuals on cosmetic surgery websites to better understand how these sites depict ideal beauty. The content analysis of 90 cosmetic surgery websites found most sites used general photos and more than half used 10 or more before-and-after photos. Women outnumbered men in general photographs but not in before-and-after photographs. Brunette men and women significantly outnumbered blondes. However, there were significantly more men with dark-colored eyes, while women were significantly more likely to have light-colored eyes. Implications are discussed.

Notes

Notes

¹ Cosmetic surgery refers to surgical procedures only, not to minimally invasive or nonsurgical procedures such as Botox, fillers, etc.

² Hiwi Indians live in Venezuela; Ache Indians live in Paraguay. The two groups have had limited contact with Westerners, never watch television, and have no contact with each other (Jones & Hill, 1993).

³ General photos are any photos that are not before-and-after photos.

⁴ There were different numbers of each category used because some duplicates were different URLs but linked to the same page. For example, http://www.breast4you.com and http://www.lookingyourbest.com might link to the same web page.

⁵ Because women are the only gender that undergoes breast augmentation, the websites that featured breast augmentation only were eliminated in testing this hypothesis.

⁶ There were only two government-sponsored sites, which had to be thrown out to run statistical analysis because there were too few cases.

⁷ In some photos there were multiple men or women.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Robyn Goodman

J. Robyn Goodman is an associate professor of advertising at the University of Florida where she also serves as graduate coordinator of advertising. Her research interests include visual communication and health communication. Email: [email protected]

E. Soo Rhee

E. Soo Rhee, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Towson University. Her research interests include luxury brand advertising, gender portrayals in advertising, dynamics of electronic word-of-mouth, cross-cultural studies in advertising, and message strategies in health advertising.