Makeup Exploration
Bethany Lane
Cosmetic Surgery
Why do we have Cosmetic Surgery?
From reading into ideas of why people have cosmetic surgery in Elliott A's Making the cut. I found that some think, "It’s about improving life, and especially business opportunities" (Elliott, p.17) This idea is reflected in Sunset Boulevard where an actress feels that she needs to reinvent herself to get back in the spotlight.
cosmetic surgery became more popular once we hit the 1990's. Refering to Elliott, 'During the 1980’s he started to see more private patients requesting cosmetic surgey. This was a trend that escalated throughout the 1990’s.'(Elliott, p.16) this alone shows how easily people are influenced by another as it was refered to as a 'trend' to have cosmetic surgery. There was also a lot of risk taking to achieve some sort of aesthetic improvement. An extreme example, Hang Mioku became addicted to cosmetic surgery and eventually resorted to injecting herself with silicone. In desperation of running out of the silicone, she resorted to cooking oil. This reacted and put her in a very dangerous position. It was said that her addiction was becoming a psychological disorder, so she started councelling in which ' treatment was too expensive for her to keep up and she soon fell back into old ways'.
Examples of why people have cosmetic surgery are stated by Elliot. 'It was very important to him that his wife ‘turned the heads of others’ when the couple were socialising and entertaining' (Ellliott, p18.) This looks at surgery from a very shallow perspective. This objectifies this mans wife to enable his to become more successful. This is a very controversial and sexist subject and idea of why this women should ahve surgery. In a lot of cases peopel are not improved, but instead become unfarmiliar and unpopular for no longer being aesthetically pleasing.
Where the media is concerned, Elliot states 'There are, of course, no end of media reports of men engaging in surgical enhancements of the body to improve their careers in, say, modelling, sports and the media. (Elliott, P.22) This supports the ide of how powerful and indluential the media is.
Elliott, A. 2008, Making the cut : how cosmetic surgery is transforming our lives, Reaktion, London. Pp. 16, 17, 18, 22, 28.
Wilder, B. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
These shots show early ideas of cosmetic surgery in the mid 1900's. Treatments using heat, pressure, exfoliation and steaming all seem a much more natural optin in comparison to today's cosmetic surgery. Now we see implants, injections and fillers to plump up and improve our appearance.
It was interesting to see how simple the processes displayed in Sunset Boulevard were. The impression was given that this made a dramatic difference to how glamourous she felt after her preparation for her final performance. However, as the viewer, there were no obvious changes made, but perhaps different application methods of makeup to enhance her face and make her appear more fresh faced and beautiful; as this is how a star was expected ot be percieved in Hollywood.