Skin pedagogies and abject bodies

Abstract

How does the beauty industry ‘narrate the skin’? What does it teach women from different cultural groups about the female body? How does skin function as a site where female subjection and abjection are produced and reproduced? In this paper we examine the skin industry pointing to its extreme commodification of the female body and to the inexcusable pressure this places on females of most age and cultural groups. We focus on two examples. Firstly, we show what the skin industry teaches girls and women about both their skin colour ‘problems’ and desirable practices of whitening and, secondarily, tanning. Secondly, we consider what the cosmetic surgery industry teaches us about female bodily ‘imperfections’ linked to certain ethnic and racial groups and the necessary ‘remedies’. Overall we show how the socio-cultural normalization of perfect skin is a product of a range of contemporary and enduring social and cultural forces overlain by complex pedagogies of power, expertise and affect.

Keywords:

• Skin
• Pedagogy
• Beauty
• Abjection
• Transnationalism

Notes

1. Our case studies have arisen from intensive searches online and on TV to locate texts related to our specified themes. We have identified the dominant skin narratives therein and, of the texts and images available, we have selected for closer analysis and commentary those that are most representative or those that provide useful data.

2. For some diverse and evocative discussions of ‘pedagogy writ large’ see the excellent collection edited by Hickey-Moody et al. (2010). In the Introduction they explore some of the differences between public/popular/cultural pedagogy and socialization.

3. In this other paper we also undertake two case studies. The first links the advertising for products and procedures for the removal of body hair with the quest for perfect skin. It focuses on tween girl as the emergent subject of beauty discourses. The second case study considers the links between cosmetic surgery tourism and the abject status of maturing skin and bodies. We connect both practices to the mobilization and entanglement of post feminist and neoliberal discourses of personal choice and self-improvement through both consumption and the enterprising self, showing that such interventions have become a means of self-reinvention and of securing one's prospects.

4. Here we allude to Edward Said's (1978) concept of Orientalism: a system of knowledge for understanding and constructing the West's cultural and racial ‘others’. Orientalism includes a conception of the imagined ‘other’, particularly women of colour, as exotic and alluring. Under globalization, the transnational female body functions ‘as a sign of a cosmopolitan imagery through which neoliberal consumerist logics are circulating’ (Shome, 2006, p. 259). Globalization, we suggest, arguably drives the converse process of Occidentalism in non-Western countries, whereby Western body practices take on the allure of the exotic, as the emergent practice of tanning in South East Asia and China suggests (Sommerville, 2007).

5. This is not to underestimate the major health damage and disfigurement caused by toxic whitening products in Third World communities, often locally made but also exported from the First World where they are banned.

6. Invasive surgical procedures: liposuction (1,607,979: 18.8%), breast augmentation (1,454,317: 17.0%) and blepharoplasty (1,153,756: 13.5%). Nonsurgical cosmetic procedures are Botulinum (Botox Dysport) injection (2,860,238: 32.7%), Hyaluronic Acid injection (1,762,700: 20.1%) and laser hair removal (1,149,759: 13.1%).

7. The total number of cosmetic surgery procedures in the USA is 3,031,146 (17.5%), in Brazil 2,475,237 (14.3%), China 2,193,935 (12.7%), India 894,700 (5.2%), Mexico, 835,280 (4.8%), Japan 742,324 (4.3%), S. Korea 659,213 (3.8%), Germany 524,842 (3.0%), Italy 350,250 (2.0%) and Russia 345,920 (2.0%). No distinction is made between national users and cosmetic surgery tourists. ISAPS, International Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures Performed in 2009.

8. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reports annually on age, gender, region, the broadly different categories of medical intervention used, the costs of surgeons and the amount of money spent. Its 2010 report shows that in the USA 12.5 million cosmetic procedures were conducted in 2009. Of these, 1.5 million were cosmetic surgical procedures, 11 million were cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures and 5.2 million were reconstructive procedures. (http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Media/Statistics.html2010)

9. Ethnicity Breakdown of Cosmetic Procedures 2009: Caucasian, 8,738,944 (70%), Hispanic, 1,455,094 (12%), African-American, 985,807 (8%), Asian-American, 742,784 (6%), Other, 571,372 (5%) (ASPS, 2010).

10. For example, the 2010 report shows that with regard to cosmetic procedures only, from 2008 to 2009 the use by Hispanics was up 12%, by African-Americans up 5% and by Asian-Americans down 17%.

11. Table 1: Ethnicity Breakdown of Cosmetic Procedures Most Commonly Requested (ASPS, 2010).Ethnicity Breakdown of Cosmetic Procedures 2009: Caucasian, 8,738,944 (70%), Hispanic, 1,455,094 (12%), African-American, 985,807 (8%), Asian-American, 742,784 (6%), Other, 571,372 (5%) (ASPS, 2010).

12. Such information has several limitations. Although we can see what percentage of the overall number of users each group represents, we are not shown what percentage of each ethnic group uses cosmetic surgery or what percentage each group represents of the overall population. This information is not broken down by gender, age or region, so usage within groups is not visible. Further, those who transcend these ethnic distinctions—the bi-racial and the multi-ethnic, cannot be represented unless they are understood as the ‘Others’.