Paper short abstract:

Starting from plastic surgeons’ promise to "repair Asian eye" I propose to think plastic surgery as a practice that goes beyond modifications of the body and how the idea of "repairing" rather than "refining" demonstrates how beauty norms are deeply entangled in dynamics of race, class and power.

Paper long abstract:

During my PhD research – about aesthetic changes made on Chinese migrant women in Portugal - I focus on interviewing plastic surgeons who perform "blepharoplasties on Asian eyes".

As some authors have already stated, a biomedical approach to bodies acts as a powerful discourse. In Portugal this medical specialty is called Aesthetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and it focus on the reparation, correction and aesthetic interventions. Despite the fact that since its first appearance as a medical specialty (Gilman 1998) the first procedures have been performed in opposition to the last, both its borders and the public discourses it conveys are permeable.

One example comes from blepharoplasty often publicized in clinics as an “Asian eye reparation” regardless is aesthetic goals.

I therefore focus on plastic surgery as a medical practice that goes beyond the material modification of the body, but also produces different subjectivities. I address how the discourse emphasizes the dimension of “reparation” rather than “redefinition”, which works to destabilize boundaries and variations of the same procedure, showing beauty norms has both deeply personal and deeply entangled in dynamics of race, class and power.

Using an ethnographic approach, I demonstrate how medical, racial, and political discourses have long reinforced the biopolitical norm (Rose 2006) by excluding or devaluing those deemed outside the pattern. “Repair” has an embodied and fluid concept, that not only intersects identities, but also imposes normative aesthetic ideals and bodies - that would otherwise be considered “ordinary” but have been deemed “abnormal” given these existing norms.