Short Abstract

This panel explores the polarized meanings of body modification—between empowerment and conformity, creativity and commodification—tracing how global and local practices shape identities, aesthetics, models of health and powers in contemporary societies.

Long Abstract

The worldwide diffusion of cosmetic products, procedures, and treatments—becoming increasingly refined, less invasive, and more accessible—has contributed to the normalization of body modification and generated new encounters among diverse aesthetic traditions and visual cultures. The liminal border between therapeutic purposes and models of performative body excellence questions the legitimation of interventions. Once marginalized as subcultural or stigmatized practices—or, alternatively, confined to medical/cosmetic domains—body modifications have moved into the mainstream, yet their interpretations remain profoundly polarized.

Practices that were once rejected as extreme, deviant, or unattainable are now widely embraced in popular culture. Still, they carry polarized meanings: celebrated as acts of empowerment, self-enhacement, creativity and agency, while simultaneously criticized as signs of conformity, commodification, or submission to globalized hegemonic regimes. This ongoing polarization between liberation and regulation makes body intervention a powerful site for interrogating wider dynamics of identity, power, and social change.

This panel invites scholars and researchers to examine the cultural, social, and symbolic meanings of body modifications, focusing on their historical transformation and contemporary polarizations. We welcome papers that address how modified bodies negotiate these positions across varied contexts, engaging with questions such as:

• How do polarized views of body modification intersect with identity, agency, and self-expression in relation to gender, race, class, age, and sexuality?

• What power structures drive body modification, and how are these structures themselves polarized across cultural contexts, often against local or indigenous practices, thereby reshaping traditional understandings of the body?

• In what ways do media, fashion, and celebrity culture reinforce or destabilize the polarization between normalization and exoticization? And the medical boundary between “cosmetic” and “necessary”?

• How do individuals navigate the polarized gazes of admiration and stigma in relation to their altered bodies?

• How do new technologies—gene editing, biohacking, AI-driven enhancements—amplify polarized ethical debates?

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