Postmodern delusions of the female “self” by paula roush

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

Postmodern delusions of the female “self” Abstract In the increasingly youth- and beauty-centric society of the Western world, there has been an unrelenting increase in demand for cosmetic plastic surgery over the last two decades: Reaching figures of over 38,000 procedures in the UK alone (BAAPS, 2011) and topped a staggering 10 million in the USA for the year 2010 (ASAPS, 2011). The disturbing feature of this phenomenon is that it is a malais that particularly effects women rather than the whole of society: 91% of cosmetic surgery procedures in the US last year were performed on women (ibid). Although this trend is undoubtedly driven by increased accessibility, economics and technical advances, the gender bias demonstrated demands elaboration on the very nature and perhaps pathology of postmodern female identity. That this phenomenon is a symptom of postmodern society generally is certain, its origins, however, are also deeply rooted in the history of women in society and visual culture and their domination by a patriarchal hegemony. This essay explores drivers of this phenomenon, the peculiar susceptibility of women and the role of visual culture in the pathogenesis of female identity in the postmodern era and moves on to discuss commentary on identity by contemporary female artists, relating how their work adds to our understanding of the issues involved.

Section 1.

Phenotype, phenomenology and postmodernism

Drivers The increase in demand for cosmetic plastic surgery procedures has engendered a substantial report on the ethics involved by the European community (Beaufort et al. 2001). Exploration of the potential drivers of the current boom in uptake of cosmetic plastic surgery by this document and others (cited and reviewed in Davis, 1995, Beaufort et al., 2001 and Dolzelal 2010) uncovered multiple contributory factors that are summarized in a conceptual map given in Appendix 1. It is beyond the remit of this text to produce a detailed analysis of each of the findings, however to summarise, the key drivers appear to be increased accessibility (though improved technology and economics) and increased acceptibilty (affected by changes in societal attitudes). An undoubted contributory factor is also the increased lifespan, health, fitness and therefore life-quality expectations of post 40 yr old people (Beaufort et al., 2001). This phenomenon could be dismissed as simply epitomising the throwaway nature of today's culture, with the application of this consumerist attitude to our own bodies. However it may be more accurately described as an intrinsic symptom of the very nature of postmodern society: An important factor which embraces many of the individually identified drivers. A sign of the postmodern times – symptom of societal structure. The almost unlimited ability and drive for self-improvement (both psychological and physical) and reconstruction of self is an important component of the post-modern age. Postmodernity is characterised by a lack of institutional authority, boundaries, absolute truths and constraints of thought and being (Owens, 1985). An intrinsic feature of today’s post-colonial world is the diaspora of many people, not just on a cultural and international level, but also intra-nations. This increased nomadism, even from north to south England for socio-economic reasons, has a significant effect on individual’s notions and constructions of self. In the past, identity was intrinsically linked with your placement within local society, local knowledge of your relatives and familial history (Davis, 1995). With the movement

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

of people away from their places of origin, their identity is unknown to a greater extent, and can therefore be reinvented. In his seminal book: “The presentation of self in everyday life” (1959), Erving Goffman explains social interaction as a series of performances whereby individuals use “impression management” to open up new and potentially profitable opportunities. Social interaction is characterized by information gathering, whereby each participant attempts to gather information about the person he encounters, to compare that to his frame of references and to then alter his interaction accordingly. An individual controls the impression given to the encountered person by adapting their own appearance, manner and context, in order to present a positive impression (ibid). First impressions are therefore all important and rely on a range of signifiers: dress, car, abode, and physical appearance, particularly that of the face, which in western society has become perhaps inextricably linked with our notion of self (Negrin, 2002). It is in this society of “appearance dominance” and new possibilities, where one's success and therefore place in society can now be constructed and is a matter of choice rather than chance of birth, that we can begin to see why the demand for alteration of appearance towards the socioculture construct of a successful phenotype has rocketed. The question remains why are women particularly susceptible to this social practice? Section 2 .

Why women? - nurture not nature.

Given the different susceptibilities demonstrated between the sexes, is it simply down to sex, either the natural drive to attract the opposite or simply a socio-cultural difference between female and male constructs of identity. Although generally symptomatic of the nature of postmodern culture, the gender bias of this phenomenon stems from the social and cultural objectification of women. In the West, human societal structure has been patriarchal. Womens existence in these societies have therefore been subordinate, their very power base is often dependent on the strength and position of the men that they attract and form relationships with. Womens identity throughout history has therefore become intrinsically linked with her appearance/ attractiveness. “Women are expected to maintain their form, Dolezal (2010) summarises the dichotomy appearance and comportment within strictly of women in Western society efficiently defined social parameters or else face stating that they are invisible as social stigmatisation and loss of social capital.” Dolezal 2010 subjects and yet highly visible as objects. Media imagery influences and the gaze. In the acclaimed 1972 book Ways of Seeing, John Berger discusses the inherent differences between how men and women see themselves: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” and how men and women are differentially treated within society; subjects versus “feminism has long acknowledged objects. Western visual culture reflects, affects and that visuality (the condition of how reinforces these societal attitudes regarding gender we see and make meaning of what roles and their inequality. Given how images we see) is one of the key modes by dominate our daily milieu, these observations on the which gender is culturally inscribed gendered difference in representations seen in art in Western culture.” Amelia Jones 2003. museums and its mimicry by the mass media, are bound to affect women’s notions of identity. Indeed as the art critic and feminst, Griselda Pollack succinctly puts it: “The museum as concept is an archive concept that participates actively in presenting these distorted mirrors for our identification.” (Pollock, 2007). Important too is the concept that it is not just men who constantly scrutinise women but women themselves, comparing and judging the objectified female “other” with themselves. A woman’s comparative

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

appearance is therefore intimately linked to her valuation of self (Skeggs, 2002). Foucault (1991) asserts that we have a drive to conform to social standards to avoid stigmatisation and punishment meted out by the judgmental and antagonistic gaze of the other (whether real or imagined), which amounts to self-monitoring, and is a considerable driver towards normalisation and social control if not repression (McNay 1994). Embodiment theory According to Dolezal (2010) contemporary embodiment theory concentrates on the drive for “body invisibility”, where in order for an individual to function optimally, the body goes largely unnoticed within daily life (social acceptance) and is simply a corporeal tool by which the subject realises their intentional agency. This type of successful “body invisibility” becomes disrupted when the body is In this sort of “healthy” and brought to the attention of the subject in some way, either “successful” bodily experience, by performative failure (illness, injury, pain or fatigue) or in the body seamlessly facilitates the case of women, its objectification. Dolezal asserts that: the subject’s relation to the “In these cases, the body is perceived as…an obstacle to external environment, and as my relation to the world.” And as such the individual’s such it is largely unnoticed.” Dolezal 2010. objectified female body becomes pathologised, especially since it is compared to the unrealistic expectations promulgated by the media and inevitably found wanting. The natural reaction to any such disruption of body invisibility that affects successful action of the subject is to eradicate the causes, often by medical intervention. The effect of media imagery is to change our comparitor of “the normal body” away from the average seen of natural everyday people, towards the air-brushed, super-enhanced extremes that we see in glossy media images. Our success at integrating into society is now judged against unrealisable constructed super-standards. I would argue that these standards have become a dominant influence on the construction of the Lacanian “ideal-ego” (1968) for women and that the cosmetic surgery boom is simply women striving to actualize this female ideal of perfection. The use of cosmetic surgery in order to conform to these constructed unrealistics standards is selfperpetuating – the more people that surgically enhance their appearance, the narrower the range of appearance seen in society. A question of autonomy Many feminist writers have questioned the personal motivation and autonomy of the women involved, with people such as Wolf (1991) suggesting that women are acting as mindless sheep following male ideals set by the media and advertising industry. The work of social scientist Davis (1995) questions this assertion. Phenomenological analysis of interveiws with women who have elected to undergo cosmetic surgery reveals that these patients were not trying to achieve beauty per se but simply wished to fit in with normative standards of appearance. They maintain that their action was not directly coerced by the men in their lives and that it was an informed choice in order to increase their successful interaction with society, to avoid stigmatisation. These women felt empowered by their choice to undergo surgery. However, analysis of this work fails to take into account the influence of the media/male gaze, and the socio-cultural construction of the range of acceptable appearance for women. Just because they appear to be making a free choice does not mean to say that it is an uninfluenced one.

Section 3 – Commentary of female artists: Reconstructing female identity Feminist art theory Since visual imagery is all pervasive in today’s society, and media imagery is heavily influenced by art, it is therefore within the remit of female artists to attempt to redress the imbalance that has developed within Western society.

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

Feminist art sprang up as a response to theoretical developments in feminist art theory in the 1970’s by Linda Nochlin and continued by art critics such as Grizelda Pollack (1999, 2003 and 2007) who questioned the patriarchal language and structure of art history, examined differential gender representation in Western art and continued to push for the acceptance and increased visibility of women within the history and practice of art. This new “feminist art” attempted to produce art that truly reflected the lives and experience of womankind. What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive review, but examples of some of the diverse strategies used to comment on female identity. Avoidance tactics. Some feminist artists purposefully avoid using imagery of the female body or face – arguing that any such representation is too saturated with memories of past misuse in visual culture. Instead these artists expressed the feminine condition using or subverting semiotic associations and traditional ephemera and media that are associated with women and women’s work (using traditional women’s crafts not normally acceptable forms of “high art”). An exemplar of this is Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner party” 1974 to 1979. This collaborative installation consists of a triangular table with embroidered table settings and decorated china plates for 39 famous women from myth and history (Chicago, 1979). The absence of any form of figurative representation of these women may allude to their invisibility in history and society.

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Whilst this type of art certainly makes us think and question about the role and representation of women in society, its still leaves us with a blankness, a lack of sorts; removing them from a scene, sustaining their invisibility in society. Images are powerful tools: Is this approach then a failure to provide positive images of women to counteract the objectifying imagery so prevalent in visual culture? The unconstrained female body Other feminist art is somewhat more aggressive and confrontational, often exploring female sexuality, vaginal imagery and menstrual blood. Artists such as Jenny Saville challenge the increasingly narrow confines of acceptable female appearance by producing savagely exaggerated paintings of “real womens” bodies, often from unflattering angles or deformed by postioning the model’s flesh (often the artist herself) against glass (McKenzie, 2005). This work attempts to counteract the aestheticaly pleasing, idealized and oversexualised imagery of women that abound in art history and mass media.

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

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Subversion and parody of established sterotypes. Yet other feminist artists examine the notion of the “male gaze” as coined by Mulvey in her polemic essay on film theory (1975); where women are objectified, projecting to a male viewer, a series of images and poses that conform to the socio-culturally constructed expectations of submissive womanhood. Key in this area is the work of Cindy Sherman, where she often photographs herself in the parodying role of different female ‘types’ constructed and portrayed by media or society (cindysherman.com, 2011).

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“In her famous ‘film still’ series of photographs, Sherman photographs herself dressed and in setting to resemble roles of B-movie actresses – archetypal female roles that ware depicted in film. The images are further depersonalized by Sherman’s refusal to title them, as well as numbering some of them.

Thinking practices essay 2011

In in

Claire Linge

the ‘History Portraits’ series Sherman photographs herself roles reminiscent of those of women depicted in famous paintings by great masters. Sherman does not copy famous film stills of specific characters, but rather constructs a portrait through semiotic signage of recognizable “types” of women portrayed in visual culture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture.

The pathology behind post-modern identity The early work of Kiki Smith also comments on post-modern identity, subtly pointing out that constructed appearance and thus identity of the post-modern age hides a whole gamut of insecurities, imperfections and psycoses (Deicth, 1992). This is particulary evident her works entitled “Pee body” and “Tail”. In the latter piece, the whole nature of the pose, crawling on hands and knees, and the “tail” of excrement-like wax seemingly expelled from the figures conveys a feeling of crisis in sanity and social order.

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In Gillian Wearing’s self-portrait entitled “Tribute to the woman with the bandaged face that I saw down the Walworth road yesterday” (Gisbourne, 2002), she denies the viewer knowledge of the object by covering the face with bandages. Not only does this remove all personal signifiers from our view – and therefore renders the subject bereft of identity, the denial of knowledge, albeit a constructed and interpreted one built through signified associations, opens up whole new narratives within the mind of the viewer – some linked with the bandages themselves – associations of wounds, trauma, accidents, tragedy etc. It could also be interpreted as alluding to the damaged identity of the postmodern woman.

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

A second piece by Wearing – again a self-portrait entitled “portrait of myself aged 3” is were an adult Wearing stares out from an archival cherubic young image of herself aged 3. The clash of knowing eyes and innocence is disturbing, commenting on the loss of innocence, where the 3yr old Wearing’s identity is at its most natural and is yet to be influenced by societal and cultural codas of female identity.

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Orlan: Holy fool or heretic? Although much has been written about the controversial Orlan (O’Bryan 1997 and 2005, Davis 1995, Clark 1999 and van Oorschot 2010 amongst many others), no essay on postmodern female identity would be complete without a section on this French female artist. In the 1990’s Orlan went to such extremes in the name of art that it simultaneously catapulted her into the realms of “Artists of significance” and, according to her critics, into the categories of “Feminist sell-out”. Orlan staged a series of ten cosmetic surgery operations to alter her body and facial appearance, entitled “The reincarnation of Saint Orlan”. The main focus of these operations was facial reconstruction. Orlan’s approach appears superficially to be crude, but is loaded with feminist concepts and multilayered subcontexts. Orlan’s design of her ‘new face’ is a notable part of her artistic concept and incorporated facial features from iconic paintings of female beauty from art history: The chin of Orlan reading La Robe by Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, 1 st Surgery-Performance, July Botticelli’s Venus, nose of 1990, Paris. Cibachrome Diasec mount,165x110cm. [Online image]. Available from < Gerome’s Psyche, lips of http://www.orlan.net/works/performance/>. Accessed 14/03/11. Boucher’s Europa, eyes of an anonymous member of school of Fontainbleu’s Diana, and forehead of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Crucially, these figures were actually chosen because of their mythological associations rather

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

than their being typical of patriarchal (both artists and their patrons) ideas of female beauty (van Oorschot, 2010). Nevertheless this selection of iconography retains an interesting tension between this duality of inference. Although, according to van Oorschot, Orlan has been criticized by a number of feminists as complying with the very tool of oppression that “increases pressure on women to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty”, Orlan insists: "My work is not a stand against cosmetic surgery, but against the standards of beauty, against the dictates of a dominant ideology that impresses itself more and more on feminine ... flesh" (Orlan cited in O'Bryan 1997). As a result of these procedures Orlan’s facial features, rather than beautiful, are bizarre and firmly outside the realms of socially acceptable appearance. Nevertheless, the artwork is not exclusively the resulting reconstructed appearance, it is the whole circus surrounding the event of its transformation. For each operation, Orlan was conscious, being under local anaesthetic only, and had carefully orchestrated the whole operation for recording and broadcasting to museums and art galleries world-wide. Whilst being sliced open and having her features rearranged by the surgeon she conversed with the audience, lecturing, answering questions or quoting from psychoanalyst’s texts (ibid). By doing thus she maintained the appearance of being in absolute control of events rather than being the compliant object of the surgeon’s acts; demonstrating her agency and her use of “Carnal Art is not interested the surgeon as the tool by which she produces her actions. in the plastic-surgery result, but in the process of The fact that the art is the whole transformative process surgery, the spectacle and and not just the sanitized “before and after” photo’s that are discourse of the modified so typical of cosmetic surgery marketing propaganda seen in body which has become the womens’ beauty and fashion magazines and the like, place of a public debate" (Orlan cited in Kerejeta 2002). highlights the true nature of the suffering involved when undergoing these highly invasive operative procedures (ibid).

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Finally the very title “ The reincarnation of Saint Orlan” brings with it religious connotations of either self flagellation/emoliation in order to cleanse the body of sin (original or otherwise) or martyrdom, a condition which also gains a degree of power/action by its passive and calm acceptance of suffering in the name of “a greater good”.

Orlan’s work highlights the influence of patriarchal history, culture and society, on women, their identity and the pathologisation of their natural bodies and faces, opening up debate within the minds of the intended audience, reinvigorate questioning rather than blind acceptance of the phenomenon of increased use and acceptance of Cosmetic Plastic Surgery. Orlans’ use of technology as an empowering device, especially for her own non-conformist ends, reverberates with the assertions of social scientist Davis (1995) who stated that women had used cosmetic surgery as a self-empowering action in order to improve their social currency, and also with Haraway’s (1991) critique of the “natural body poitics” typical of many feminists with its “antiscience metaphysics, or demonology of technology”. Conclusions That notions of individual identity in the postmodern era are multilayered constructions is undoubted. The complexity of specifically female identity, however, is compounded by the fact that it is a intricate interweaving of contributory factors that are both instrinsic to the individual and

Thinking practices essay 2011

Claire Linge

their experience, but also external constructs based on expectations of current society. These expectations are dictated by the marketplace and the demands of the economically and culturally dominant nations. The effects of this complexity is to subjugate women further by pushing them to conform with these artificial standards of acceptible appearance by undergoing risky surgical procedures. Conversley it has also been argued (Davis, 1995) that women can be empowered by cosmetic surgery, which can increase their chances of social success. These complexities and tensions surface in most contemporary art on the subject of female identity, but has been particularly well explored in the work of Orlan. She offers no simple answers, instead she maintains a tension of clashing concepts regarding female identity and its use/abuse of cosmetic surgery. This phenomenon of a boom in cosmetic plastic surgery may also be an early warning sign of a more general malais that is affecting today’s society and one that is surprisingly antithetical to the post-modern characteristic of “no boundaries”. We have developed a similar expectation of perfection with regards to our groceries (homogeneously shaped fruit for instance) and there are beginnings of an extension of cosmetic surgery uptake to men, with the highest rate of increase in cosmetic surgery being seen in men in 2010 (ref). Indeed with the possibilities for re-inventing ourselves and our surroundings widening with rapid developments in technology one is left questioning whether this pursuit of perfection at all costs is healthy and wondering where it will all end – designer babies, cosmetic surgery for pets? It is important therefore that artists continue to question these issues and our attitudes towards them. After all, the socio-cultural construct of the range of acceptable appearance is intrinsically more mutable than some of the apparently deeply psychologically rooted ideals of physical beauty and is therefore open to challenge and change. Word counte - 3513

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Thinking practices essay 2011

Appendix 1 Conceptual map of the drivers of the current boom in cosmetic surgery.

Claire Linge