When breast is not best – young women and breast reduction surgery

abstract

Most cosmetic surgery patients in South Africa are younger than 21, and in this focus we examine narrative accounts from young South African women who have chosen to undergo cosmetic breast reduction surgery. Feminist debates on cosmetic surgery have focused on the question of whether to regard women who modify their bodies in this way as active agents engaged in liberatory ‘body projects’, or whether such projects are evidence of their subjection to oppressive stereotypes and beauty norms. The latter perspective is challenged here by the participants’ characterisation of breast reduction surgery as profoundly ‘freeing’. The article deals in particular with the conscious choice of participants to knowingly risk not being able to breastfeed children in future in order to achieve a body type which conforms to their understanding of youthful beauty and sexuality. While feminist approaches to breastfeeding have largely focused on questions of the conflict between urging that breast is best and the ability to challenge women's prevailing domestic roles, the unequal gender division of labour in the home and implications for re-imagining gendered ideal worker norms in the workplace, missing from these accounts are the voices of young women - for whom the maternal imperative is a largely irrelevant consideration in the construction of a successful embodied identity.

Keywords:

• cosmetic surgery
• sexual subjectivity
• femininity
• breastfeeding
• body image