Michel Foucault Extreme Makeover Essay

“Extreme Makeover” and the Normalization of Cosmetic Surgery According to the 2013 report released from American Society of Plastic Surgeons, there has been a dramatic increase in the popularity of cosmetic surgery over the past decade (American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2). 15.1 million cosmetic surgeries were carried out in the United States alone, assuming the fourth consecutive year of growth. Cosmetic surgery used to be the culture of the wealthy and famous or the psychically disabled. However, that is no longer the case. Virtually the entire population, men and women, young and old, and people of fluctuating socioeconomic statuses “go under the knife” at the hand of figure augmentation.

Studies suggest that media is responsible for

In his book, Michel Foucault asserts that normalization is one of the many methods for exercising ultimate social control using only the minimal amount of force. “These methods,” claims Foucault, “made possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body, … assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility” (Foucault 137). Then normalization, on Foucault’s aspect, has a double complex outcome. It inhibits, by forcing conformity with the norm, and at the same time enables, by making the individual more adept to particular structures. That is to say, the very individual that establishes new competencies and abilities is likewise a subject of manipulation. Thus according to Foucault, one becomes a “docile body” after the process of normalization. The process of normalization is itself imperceptible but makes the subject aggressively visible to the population to carry on the desired effect. “[It] is the fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection” (Foucault 187). Hence, in keeping with Foucault’s view, normalization takes effect as it transitions from an unconcealed expression of effectiveness to the conventional display of subjects, where the driving force is gaze