Shining a light on the grey zones of gender construction: breast surgery in France and Italy

Abstract

This article analyses the areas of overlap between cosmetic surgery and reconstructive surgery, using the examples of both female and male breast surgery, and shows that these areas of overlap are sites of the construction of gendered bodies. The data are drawn from two pieces of research: the first based on 17 in-depth interviews with Italian cosmetic surgeons and the second based on 99 interviews with breast cancer patients and medical oncological professionals conducted in France and Italy. The primary data are supplemented by an analysis of the medical literature. ‘Too small’ female breasts (micromastia) and male gynecomastia (male fatty breast tissue) are pathologised by the surgeons and the medical literature, and a surgical intervention is presented as a way to heal this pathology. The pathologisation of healthy breasts goes along with the aestheticisation of oncological breast surgery. The interventions performed during a post-mastectomy breast reconstruction are guided by normative ideas of how a female body should be. The gender norms inscribed in this surgery practice can however be contested by patients: they can ask for a breast reconstruction while refusing all forms of ‘enhancement’.

Keywords::

• gender construction
• reconstructive surgery
• cosmetic surgery
• breast cancer

Acknowledgements

Part of the data contained in this article is derived from a PhD research for which I obtained a SHS scholarship from the Cancéropôle Île-de-France. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the “Conference on Body, Public Health and Social Theory”, Copenhagen Business School, 3–4 April 2013. I wish to thank Ilana Löwy and the two anonymous reviewers of Journal of Gender Studies for their useful suggestions, and Rachel Alsop for her editorial assistance; obviously the responsibility of any error in the text remains entirely mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. For a discussion of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) ‘diagnosis’ as pathologisation of transgender identity, see also Carrera et al. (2013).

^2. cf. http://chirurgie-mammaire.net/seins-tubereux.html

^3. cf. http://www.chirurgo-plastico-estetico.it/chirurgia-del-seno/mammelle-tuberose-tubolari/e%E2%80%99-possibile-eseguire-in-ospedale-un-intervento-per-la-mammella-tuberosa/

^4. Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = ;QRyI30vZfvY

^5. All the names are pseudonyms.

^6. In order to fully guarantee the anonymity of the persons involved in the research, I am unable to give the full reference to the document of the CLCC.

^7. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to national and class variation in aesthetic preferences linked to breast surgery.

^8. Some patients and breast cancer activists are careful to separate the surgical reconstruction that recreates a breast from the process of acceptance of a new body, whether it is surgically reconstructed or asymmetric.

^9. Some patients I have met opt for no reconstruction at all and refuse to consider an asymmetric silhouette a mutilation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cinzia Greco

Cinzia Greco, PhD candidate (École des hautes études en sciences sociales – CERMES3); Italian-born anthropologist whose research interests include gender, medicine and the body, Greco is currently conducting a multi-site comparative study of post-mastectomy breast reconstruction and cosmetic breast surgery in France and Italy, ‘Breast reconstruction in oncology and in cosmetic surgery: a comparative sociological analysis’. This doctoral research focuses on the way patients and doctors view and manage the two practices. She has presented internationally and has published in Donna Woman Femme.