ANATOMY OF THE DIFFERENCE: BODY, GENDER AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE EXPERIENCE OF AESTHETIC PLASTIC SURGERY

This paper discusses some aspects related to aesthetic plastic surgeries, understood as a medicalized process that plays an important role on the construction of gender differences. In accordance with authors that have been discussing some scientific projects such as the discovery, classification and nomination of the body as something profoundly affected by culture values, my intention here is to look over the discourses that evolve plastic surgeries, in different places I had observed, in order to understand the very notions of body and gender that underlies them. The narratives heard on the field had shown that linked to the idea of 'reaching a perfect body' we have the idea of 'feminility', displayed on the kind of plastic surgery that is done, on the parts of the body that are 'improved' or not and in the 'definition' (the shaping) of the body and, finally, implicit on the medical discourse concerning anatomy, that is informed by an aesthetic of difference that leads us to some values such as 'self-esteem', 'before' and 'after', or "feeling good about themselves". The fieldwork was began in 2002 and evolved open interviews and informal conversations with women who live in Florianopolis - SC - Brazil and that had experienced or were experiencing at that moment aesthetic plastic surgery procedures. I am also approaching mediatic discourses with the purpose of making evident the symbolic elements that emerge from this culture of plastic surgery in Brazil.