Dowrick, A. and Holliday, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-8796-1853 (2022) Tweakments: Non‐surgical beauty technologies and future directions for the sociology of the body. Sociology Compass, 16 (11). e13044. ISSN 1751-9020
Abstract
Science, aesthetics, the body, and the concerns they attach to, such as gender, ‘race’, class, age and consumer culture, are key objects of sociological investigation. These discourses have been reignited in recent years by changes in the availability, accessibility and affordability of medicalised cosmetic procedures. The most popular of these procedures are non-surgical ‘tweakments’ to the shape and/or appearance of the face, usually through use of ‘injectables’ such as Botox and dermal fillers. This shift in focus from surgical procedures to minimally invasive injections has led more practitioners to join the market of potential providers and a wider variety of consumers to seek them out. This has been accompanied by panic about the risks to bodies and aesthetic standards if stewardship of beauty should fall into the wrong hands. We trace the history of medicalised cosmetic practices and academic discourses on the body, particularly how cosmetic practices are understood to produce the body as gendered and racialised. We then suggest future approaches for exploring the sociological significance of new cosmetic practices. We encourage researchers to explore how imaginaries of (un)desirable bodies shape debates about appropriate use of non-surgical cosmetic procedures, alongside investigation of the situated intersections of identity that are inscribed on bodies.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | beauty gender, science and medicine sociology of health, aging, and medicine sociology of science and technology sociology of sex, gender, and sexuality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Sociology and Social Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Feb 2025 09:22 |
Last Modified: | 26 Feb 2025 09:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/soc4.13044 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:223727 |