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Around the globe, aesthetic surgery has become
a cultural and medical fixture. Sander Gilman seeks to explain
why by presenting the first systematic world history and cultural
theory of aesthetic surgery. Touching on subjects as diverse as
getting a "nose job" as a sweet-sixteen birthday present and the
removal of male breasts in seventh-century Alexandria, Gilman
argues that aesthetic surgery has such universal appeal because
it helps people to "pass," to be seen as a member of a group with
which they want to or need to identify. The book draws on an extraordinary
range of sources. Gilman is as comfortable discussing Nietzsche,
Yeats, and Darwin as he is grisly medical details, Michael Jackson,
and Barbra Streisand's decision to keep her own nose. The book
contains dozens of arresting images of people before, during,
and after surgery. This is a profound, provocative, and engaging
study of how humans have sought to change their lives by transforming
their bodies.
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