Deracializing Asian Australia? Cosmetic surgery and the question of race in Australian television

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which the discourse of ‘deracialization’ is consistently used in Australian media to posit the surgically modified Asian–Australian body as a site of national concern and anxiety. Through close readings of two major Australian factual television programmes on the topic of race and cosmetic surgery, we show how this discourse is deployed to uphold a form of somatic multiculturalism that continues to centre whiteness as the norm. It does so by failing to take into context social, cultural and historical differences when reading race onto the modified non-western and/or non-white body. Consequently, Asian–Australian subjects are allowed only two positions, namely, the ‘authentic’ (unmodified) body and the body that seeks to conform through undergoing surgery. Ultimately, we argue that this media approach demonstrates a lack of space in the national imaginary for popular representations of hybrid non-white subjects whose bodies and behaviours do not conform to monoracial notions of multiculturalism.

Notes

1. For recent examples of this kind of sensationalizing reporting, see ‘Victims of a Craze for Cosmetic Surgery’ (BBC, December 15, 2014), ‘Plastic Surgery Boom as Asians seek “Western” Look’ (CNN, October 24, 2011), ‘South Korea’s Growing Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery’ (ABC News, June 20, 2014), and ‘The Ugly Side of Korean Plastic Surgery’ (ABC Radio, November 16, 2014).

2. It is important to note from the onset that the term ‘deracialization’ is not used in medical or popular discourse but instead has been coined by media, presumably to emphasize ‘race’ as the singular determining factor that informs and motivates the surgical choices of these Asian and Asian–Australian women.

3. Quoted from SBS ‘Beauty Race’ program website: http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/overview/422/Beauty-Race [accessed 9 July 2015].

4. The exclusion of men and focus on women is an interesting point that deserves an article in its own right because it suggests that the Asian–Australian woman is unable to make rational decisions about her own body, and is easily swayed by totalizing discourses of racially indicated beauty.

5. SBS program website: http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/overview/422/Beauty-Race.

6. Similar concerns have been raised by researchers in Western cultural context and in relation to Disney and Barbie aesthetics in particular. See for example Derenne and Beresin (2006); Thesander (1997); Grogan (2007); Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive (2006); Coleman (2008); and Mcgladrey (2014).

7. The authors would like to credit this observation to Dr Jessica Walton.

8. http://www.sbs.com.au/sbsinternational/programs/change-my-race

9. See Elfving-Hwang (2013) for a discussion how decisions to undergo cosmetic surgery are often linked to class aspirations, rather than notions of vanity.