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In his exploration of the striking parallels
between the development of cosmetic surgery and the field of psychiatry,
Gilman entertains an array of philosophical and psychological
questions that underlie the more practical decisions routinely
made by doctors and potential patients considering these types
of surgery. While surveying and incorporating the relevant theories
of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Karl Menninger, Paul Schilder,
contemporary feminist critics, and others, Gilman considers the
highly unstable nature of cultural notions of health, happiness,
and beauty. He reveals how ideas of race and gender structured
early understandings of aesthetic surgery, discussing both the
"abnormality" of the Jewish nose and the historical requirement
that healthy and virtuous females look "normal" thereby enabling
them to achieve invisibility. Reflecting on historically widespread
prejudices, Gilman describes the persections, harassment, attacks,
and even murders that continue to result from bodily difference,
and he encourages readers to question the cultural assumptions
that underlie the increasing acceptability of this surgical form
of psychotherapy.
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