Plastic surgeons: from beauty as a divine gift to Faustian imperatives

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper explores the current boom of plastic surgery as a component of a wider phenomenon: an increasing concern for the body appearance in contemporary society, with the resulting urge to resort to a variety of methods so as to adapt organic bodies (visibly unsuitable) to the ideal forms inspired by models established by the media. A controversial offspring of medicine, plastic surgery often sells its prodigies as the outcomes of design techniques applied to the living body. These methods bear a relation to the edition tools used on digital images in order to correct defects in the “ exemplary” body photographs spread by the mass media. It is as if rather than operating on a body by making an incision in the flesh, surgeons sculpted features and defective parts of the body with their scalpels, touching up the imperfections of bodies drawn as static, bidimensional images that will be consumed by the eyes. In spite of the novelty of this phenomenon, its manifestations echo some of the mythical characters of our philosophic and mythical tradition, which can illuminate its more curious and significant aspects.