Tag Archives: plastic surgery

Beauty Contests, Civil Rights, Transwomen, and Surgeries: All In One Story

Laurie and Debbie say:

Whatever you may think of beauty contests, they matter deeply to the people involved in them. They are also a useful way to look at what’s going on in the world, especially the world of conventionally beautiful young women and those who fetishize them.

Miss Universe Canada is a separate beauty contest from Miss Universe USA. This year, Jenna Talackova competed in the Miss Universe Canada contest, the first identified transwoman to do so. She finished in the top 12, and tied for Miss Congeniality (a role voted on by the contestants, not the judges).

Talackova threatened to go to court for the right to compete, but the Miss Universe organization, which is owned by Donald Trump, agreed to let her compete before the case went to court. She might not have won her case in the U.S., but she probably would have won in Canada, where the LGBT rights laws are the most progressive in the Americas.

Take a moment to celebrate Talackova’s multiple victories: she got into the pageant (which was her dream), she did well, the other contestants liked her, and she changed a part of the world–a part that is deeply important to her.

South of the Canadian border, Olivia Culpo (Miss Rhode Island) won the Miss USA pageant. In the interview before the winner was announced, she drew a Twitter question if she thought transgender women should be allowed to compete in these contests. Here’s her answer:

I do think that that would be fair. I can understand that people would be a little apprehensive to take that road because there is a tradition of natural-born women, but today where there are so many surgeries, and so many people out there who have a need to change for a happier life—I do accept that because I believe it’s a free country.

As Melissa McEwen at Shakesville points out, this is an amazing answer. In two sentences, Culpo  manages to

  • acknowledge the barrier people have to cross to accept trans candidates,
  • remind her listeners that many, if not most, of the contestants on stage have had body-mod surgeries
  • draw the connection between “beauty” surgery and gender-change surgery
  • acknowledge that transwomen are changing “for a happier life,” and
  • throw in the “free country” language which is so rarely invoked for trans rights.

The hosts of the show, Andy Cohen and Giuliana Rancic, felt that Culpo “nailed” the answer, which says that she has significant support for her position.

The host of surgeries which are common currency for 21st century beauty contestants include everything from breast augmentations to nose jobs.  Surgeries like these can only be considered “change for a happier life” because of the intense and unrelenting pressure on women to modify ourselves for the beauty market. And, unlike gender change, cosmetic surgery often doesn’t actually bring happiness to the people who undergo it. In the context of Miss Universe, however, we can hardly expect contestants to be the ones to fight against arbitrary beauty standards.

So, if a large percentage of the contestants have surgery to be able to be in the running, what is the difference between a contestant who has had a vaginoplasty and one who has had a breast augmentation? Between a contestant with a straightened nose and one with a reduced Adam’s apple?

Of course, there has been backlash. A contestant resigned from the Miss USA pageant after she lost, claiming both disgust at the thought of transwomen competing and fraud in the results. There will always be backlash, and it will always be nasty.

Jenna Talackova opened a door; Olivia Culpo explained, in simple accessible terms, why that door should be open. We don’t have to be big supporters of beauty contests to appreciate what they’ve done.

Breasts–Augmented or Not–Belong to Real Women

Debbie says:

For a show set in Miami in 1959, the director and casting director are discovering that women who haven’t had breast augmentations are hard to find.

Producers discovered many women of South Florida have been surgically enhanced beyond anything natural to the late 1950s. “I’ve actually had better luck finding synchronized swimming groups than I did finding real boobs,” said Bill Marinella, local extras casting director

For Magic City (a Starz network show set in 1959), … Marinella had to look out for a long list of period-inaccurate body features: implants in breasts, yes, but also lips and butts; tattoos; shaved chests and waxed bikini areas, too-skinny females and too-ripped men.

“We need girls with the big hips and the curves. And down here, everybody is so fit,” he said. “It’s like tiny little waist and big boobs, pardon the French. But we have to be really careful about how we go about the casting process. It’s a huge challenge.

I’m almost certainly expecting too much of a simple entertainment article, but this story is deeply lacking in context. The journalist, Kenny Malone, doesn’t quite grapple with whether or not this represents a problem (other than for the powers behind Magic City). He doesn’t leave us feeling that widespread breast augmentations are either a good or a bad thing. He quotes Marinello as saying “everybody is so fit,” which seems to be about small hips and no curves.

Reading the article, you get the feeling that (other than breast augmentations), women’s bodies have magically morphed from one shape to another, as if advertising and other tools of social control are not factors, as if the fashions in women’s bodies transform the actual bodies in some mysterious, unexplained way. There’s no sense that women diet and sweat and toil to make these physical changes in our own bodies, no sense that women cry into their our pillows at night if we can’t make our bodies fit whatever happens to be the norm in the decade we live in, a norm that is generally not made by women. Also, of course, Malone has no understanding of the way the fashion in women’s bodies gets smaller when women’s political/social strength gets more visible.

Even the plastic surgery that is the focus of the article seems to happen without much volition or conscious choice. If over 300,000 American women had breast augmentation in 2011 (that’s about one percent of the entire U.S. population, about 2% of all women), this may be correct. A lot of breast augmentation may be happening “because everybody’s doing it,” or because “it’s next on the list.” Nonetheless, trends like this don’t happen in a vacuum–why is everybody doing it? What’s the pressure on everybody to do it? What is it costing them, and what are they not able to afford or do because of it. One glaring omission in the article is any quotation at all from a woman who has had the surgery.

Malone objectifies women in such a matter-of-fact, unaware way that it’s easy to miss, but if you read the article with any care, you’ll see that absolutely the only interesting thing about women in Miami is whether or not they’ve had breast augmentation, and whether or not they’d be less likely to have had it in Los Angeles.

Every pair of living breasts I’ve ever known has been attached to a real human being, who has pressures on them and reasons to do what they do. I’m starving for newspaper articles which take this into account. What’s more, I think more articles which did take this into account would be real ammunition against the war on women which we see played out in the U.S. halls of power.

Thanks to Alan Bostick for the pointer.