Authenticity Arms Race
posted by Frank Pasquale
I’ve been concerned about America’s burgeoning culture of cosmetic surgery, and bloggers across the ideological spectrum have commented on the issue (see, e.g., here and here). Meanwhile, the great American forces of libertarianism and self-assertion are steamrollering ahead:
Not only have cosmetic procedures become more acceptable, but they’re being promoted in less sensationalized ways to whole new markets. Increasingly, reality TV’s Cinderella tale of surgical transformation is being replaced with a smart woman’s narrative of enlightened self-maintenance. . . . [M]edia sources now compliment potential customers as mature women who are “smart,” “talented” and “wise.” Such women are supposedly savvy enough to appreciate their own wisdom — but, then again, they should want to soften the telltale marks of how many years it took them to acquire it. “I am not using these injectables to look 25,” Madsen insists. “I don’t want to be 25. I just want to look like me.”
Carl Elliott’s book Better than Well documents a range of people who believe that their “true selves” are most truly expressed in some change of appearance–usually for the younger, slimmer, and stronger (which may be why almost everyone’s avatar on Second Life is so . . . robust).
The aspirations of the people Elliott writes about end up sounding like second-hand dreams (for a mass-produced individuality). Thomas Frank’s Commodify Your Dissent captured the worry well a decade ago:
Consumerism is no longer about “conformity” but about “difference.” Advertising teaches us not in the ways of puritanical self-denial (a bizarre notion on the face of it), but in orgiastic, never-ending self-fulfillment. It counsels not rigid adherence to the tastes of the herd but vigilant and constantly updated individualism.
Thus the latest co-optation of “left” culture by the beauty industry: its “repackaging and reselling the feminist call to empower women into what may be dubbed ‘consumer feminism.’”
As Jennifer Cognard-Black notes,
[M]uch of the media covering cosmetic surgery centers on the idea of choice. Parallel to Madsen’s insistence that using Botox is just another lifestyle choice with little difference from working out and eating well, Cosmetic Surgery for Dummies (For Dummies, 2005) promises that the reader will discover how to “find a qualified surgeon,” “set realistic expectations,” “evaluate the cons,” “make the surgical environment safe” . . . . Yet one choice goes completely unmentioned: The choice not to consider cosmetic surgery at all.
That shouldn’t be a surprise in a market-driven society–no one stands to make a profit off the decision not to have surgery.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things, vanity may seem like a pretty minor issue to worry about. But my ultimate concern here is not necessarily about the modifications individuals pursue for their own bodies, but those imposed on their children. Consider this provocative piece on the specter of eugenics, which notes:
[I]ndividual choices can have larger social consequences. Princeton professor Lee Silver has outlined a nightmarish scenario in which an essentially new species evolves: “The GenRich class and the Natural class will become entirely separate species with no ability to crossbreed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.” Others, such as bioethicist George Annas, have worried that such a scenario could undermine the notion of human rights, which is based on a concept of our shared humanity. On a less existentially threatening but disturbing note, Annas and others have also predicted an “arms race” among relatively affluent parents: added to pressure to enroll kids in the most prestigious preschools will be pressure to provide them with the best genes. The result could be an increased tendency to see children as commodities and status markers; on the other hand, parents who choose to forgo these measures could be seen as negligent.
The new culture of self-aggrandizing authenticity projects that bleak scenario into the self, spreading the meme that one is negligent to some future self by failing to undergo some painful investment in its appearance now.
September 30, 2007 at 12:01 am
Posted in: Culture, Law and Humanities, Law and Inequality
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Responses (5)
C - September 30, 2007 at 11:55 am
“with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee”
Even if this weren’t silly on its own, it would be hard to see how it squares with your concern that too much emphasis is placed on individuality. The natural outgrowth of “steamrollering” libertarianism and self-assertion doesn’t seem to be giving the unborn straight noses and test-taking ability. More likely, parents would want their children to have something unique, like pink eyes or accordion prowess.
I’m not sure you can fret in both directions at once.
2L - September 30, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Pasquale ignores the extent to which social status has always depended on allure and beauty. Does he think beauty was any less a social indicia 200, 500, or 1000 years ago? If anything, with the decline of race and caste as social sorters, beauty is less important than it used to be in succeeding. As many readers know, the fashion playing field has become flatter.
And contrary to what Pasquale post suggests, market forces make it increasingly cheaper to become glamorous. Contrast the price and availability of makeup and fitness equipment now and 20 years ago. Through the globalization of textile manufacturing, lower and middle income persons have access to clothing that would have been unreachable a few decades earlier.
Finally, as Virginia Postrel’s The Substance of Style suggests, because the market provides more access to beautification options, the notion of “beauty” has become multifarious. There is no one notion of what it is to look good. Instead we see a plurality of aesthetic preferences. That allows people to pursue their authentic self-images, instead of the leveled conformity they might have had in the market’s absence.
Daniel Goldberg - October 1, 2007 at 11:27 am
I’m not sure I understand the criticisms of the first two commentators.
C writes:
The natural outgrowth of “steamrollering” libertarianism and self-assertion doesn’t seem to be giving the unborn straight noses and test-taking ability. More likely, parents would want their children to have something unique, like pink eyes or accordion prowess.
The first sentence strikes me as an assertion. The kind of libertarianism run amok that Frank seems concerned with risks virtually any kind of (available) cosmetic procedure that is not illegal, does not harm another, and that comports with the parents’ individual preferences. Of course, as the dispute over the Ashley Treatment makes clear, it is far from obvious what the appropriate boundary is between cosmetic and therapeutic procedures, and the epistemic issue relating to harm is also relevant.
Nevertheless, in a culture that lionizes individual autonomy so much, I don’t think it’s too much Chicken Little-ing to point out some of the potential downsides of that norm as to cosmetic surgery. I also don’t really understand why C maintains that parents’ wishing to select for test-taking ability is not a natural outgrowth of the individualist ethos in the U.S. — parents spent ungodly resources on assuring just that. The terrible history of eugenics and selection esp. regarding disabled persons is not, IMO, just an historical artificact.
2L writes,
Pasquale ignores the extent to which social status has always depended on allure and beauty. Does he think beauty was any less a social indicia 200, 500, or 1000 years ago?
I tend to think Frank would agree with you. What does that have to do with the risks posed in this particular culture by prioritizing individual autonomy above virtually all other values? Beauty may have virtually always been an important marker of status and culture, but in many cultures the collectivist impulse was much, much stronger, which may present a defensible reason for contending that our own issues with aesthetics and beauty are not identical to those of other cultures.
There is no one notion of what it is to look good. Instead we see a plurality of aesthetic preferences.
Indeed, and a culture that prioritizes individual preferences will enable resources to be spent on whatever aesthetics the individual prefers. Right?
c - October 1, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Daniel,
Obviously it’s possible that I’m misreading him, but the first several paragraphs of Frank’s post appear to focus on an emerging justification for cosmetic surgery: individual self-expression. Meaning that the trend is AWAY from conformity. Autonomy concerns are only half of the picture, and not the half I was discussing.
It’s hard to see how this motivation would lead parents to change anything about their children-to-be — after all, they don’t yet know who the child wants to be. But if they want to foster self-expression, it makes more sense that they’d try to give the kid a more distinctive self.
There are plenty of other reasons parents want intelligent kids; duh. But a vague invocation of “the terrible history of eugenics and selection” does nothing to connect the first phenomenon (cosmetic surgery in pursuit of self-expression) with the “nightmare scenario” above.
Daniel Goldberg - October 1, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Hey C,
I don’t read Frank’s post to identify “individual self-expression” as an emerging justification for cosmetic surgery. In the U.S. at least, I’d argue it has virtually always been a significant justification. As such, I’m not sure I agree that the trend Frank is writing about is away from conformity and to individuality; the Thomas Frank piece he cites is over a decade old.
And while your point that parents’ preferences that their children express themselves does not by itself justify selection is well-taken, I daresay that it tends to be extremely difficult for parents to separate out possible differences between what they deem best for their children and what their children as autonomous agents deem as best.
This matters because while parents may have little idea of whom their child wants to be, they have very definite ideas of whom they want their child to be, and it is these latter ideas that have been and continue to be played out in selection scenarios, much to the chagrin of disability rights advocates and other concerned stakeholders.
I tend to think it is important to identify which autonomous agent we are talking about here: an adult deciding what to undertake for him or herself, or the adult parents deciding what if any selective procedures to undertake on behalf of an unborn child. Concerns about the latter are hardly new, and, IMO, they are absolutely connected to “the terrible history of eugenics and selection.” Respectfully, then, I think the connection is there, and troubling.
Of course, this is not a slam on libertarianism per se. The libertarian can obviously claim, as I allowed above, that any given selection runs afoul of the harm principle. But in such cases it is often far from obvious whether harm is present, and in any case, the harm principle is not at all the rationale given by disability studies’ scholars and disability rights’ advocates for their concern.
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