As a chubby, Mexican girl, I didn’t quite fit the standard I saw on TV or in magazines growing up. I developed an unhealthy relationship with my body image that was only exacerbated with social media and the popularization of plastic surgery. Beauty trends and standards in place often demand women of color to embody Eurocentric ideals of beauty and an oversexualized depiction of femininity. Rooted in racism and sexism, plastic surgery offers women of color the remedy to reshape their racialized bodies into a more acceptable and desirable one.
Through pláticas with the women in my community and the more traditional research I’ve conducted, my goal is not to steer anyone away from exercising their right to bodily autonomy, but instead to critique our ideas of beauty and our motivations behind plastic surgery. Inspired by Ntoake Shange’s choreopoem, “for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf,” I have assigned each woman a color to respect their privacy and to imply that all women are linked to each other like a rainbow- diverse and integral parts of a whole.
“ I think with influencers having a specific body type, I felt I needed to look like that in order to be found attractive.”– Green Girl (age 23/ Latinx)
Plastic surgeons have noticed a strong relationship between the cosmetic procedures women seek and beauty trends on social media. For example, in 2015, Kim Kardashian and the regular instagram influencer modeled the infamous “BBL” body, an hourglass figure, featuring a small waist and a big butt. As a direct result, the ASPS noted a 90.3% increase in BBLs from 2015 to 2019 (ASPS, 2024). Recently, however, we’re “seeing the more subtle, understated aesthetic in many celebrities” and women are following suit, moving towards a more natural look in their cosmetic procedures (ASPS, 2024). Beauty is unstable and with its constant shifts, women of color are left in a vicious cycle of comparing themselves to the standards and trying to meet them.
“I love my face, but I wish I looked more European.” – Purple Girl (age 20/ Latina)
Procedures, such as “ethnic rhinoplasty” and “Asian double-eyelid surgery,” have racist implications for women of color because it helps them to properly assimilate into Western culture. Plastic surgery makes assimilation possible for women of color because it alters the visible “racial mark” that historically prevented their racial “groups from disappearing into the mainstream” (Ramirez, 2020). For example, 19th century scientists enforced a hierarchy based around human difference that deemed ethnic features like the Black and Jewish nose as ugly and inferior to the Eureopean’s (Gilman, 1999). With beauty trends upholding the European standard of beauty, plastic surgery then becomes another way colonialism and white supremacy work, manifesting themselves through the often brutal reconstruction of our bodies.
“[I wanted] a breast reduction since I feel very self conscious and have been sexualized ever since I hit puberty for them…” – Yellow Girl (age 23/ Latina)
The ideal female body is one that communicates desirability and attractiveness according to the male gaze. Women are like “museum pieces: something to gaze upon, fantasize about, objectify, and possess” (Guglielmo, 2018). A woman’s breasts and derriere are primarily the sites of intrigue that measure her sexual attractiveness. Western cultures believed the spherical, small, firm and “unused” breast were the ideal because they were associated with the European woman and virginity (Schiebinger, 2013). However, the opposite was true for the racialized female body, in which the larger breast and bottom was exoticized and associated with hypersexuality. With procedures like BBLs, features that are associated with black women are now accessories sold to non-black women to heighten their sexual appeal- without the racial violence and struggles that black women have endured because of these traits.
Through my research, I connect plastic surgery to beauty standards that are informed by racist and sexist hierarchies. I aim to provide cultural context as to how the Western beauty standard has been shaped and by whom in order to acknowledge its effects on women of color. Nonetheless, a woman’s body is a vessel that exists for her to call home- a home that is beautifully crafted by nature, decorated by herself, and sometimes adorned with the help of another pair of hands.
References
Shange, Ntoake. (1977). for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Scribner Poetry.
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (2024). www.plasticsurgery.org/news/articles
Ramírez, C. S. (2020). Assimilation : an alternative history. University of California Press. doi.org/10.1525/9780520971967
Gilman, S. L. (1999). Making the body beautiful : a cultural history of aesthetic surgery. Princeton University Press. doi.org/10.1515/9780691240213
Guglielmo, L. (Ed.). (2018). Misogyny in American culture : causes, trends, and solutions. ABC-CLIO.
Schiebinger, L. L. (2013). Nature’s body : gender in the making of modern science. Rutgers University Press.
