Women’s Embodied Experiences in Facial Aesthetic Surgery

• Main Authors: Wan-Chun Cheng, 鄭婉君
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/73781777543985859595

碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 性別研究所碩士班 === 93 === The purpose of this research is to explore women’s embodied experiences in facial aesthetic surgery. Utilizing Denzin’s interpretative interactionism (1989), the data of this research was collected by means of participant observation and in- depth interview. The informants, six women, were recruited by purpose sampling. Their age are between twenty and fifty. Each interview lasts three to six hours. The whole interview process was recorded on tapes and wrote on filed note. Through the interaction and interpretation, women’s embodied experiences are represented. Interview texts were analyzed and grouped into these three major themes: “the body and the others”, “the body is selves”, “medical negotiation”. The research discusses the women’s embodied experience derived from the interaction between women and medicine. The first major themes, “the body and the others” embraces two subthemes including “I am the others”, “I am the others’ others” and contains the underline meaning that the “face” is strongly related to an individual’s role as well as value in the social-cultural context in which body concepts were constructed. The second major theme, “the body is selves” means women’s narratives of perfect body is compatible with perfect selves. The imperfect body of women interplays imperfect embodied selves. Therefore, the last major theme, “medical negotiation”, reveals how medicine comes into the picture while women managing the alienation between body and self. Through “medicine connects toward the others” and “medicine defines the normal bodies”, their bodies are objectified and become manipulability by aesthetic surgery. It is, in terms, medicine provides the chance to transform imperfect women’s body/self. Women express their agency by this opportunity, and present their new embodied social relationship through a brand new beautiful face. The researcher discussed women’s embodied experiences of facial aesthetic surgery were concentrated by three premises: “social bodies” reflects women see their body/self through socio-cultural lens; “political bodies” reveals societal requirement of gendered body; and “medicalized bodies” means women’s body confined by medical systems. In the meantime of putting our concern on how socio-cultural perspectives manipulate female body, we need to draw our attentions back to the authority of body owned by female and the agency of female body against medicalization. Researcher suggests that understanding is the key toward knowing of women’s embodied experience.