Beauty procedures from manicures to cosmetic surgery carry risk — and the reward of a better life

WASHINGTON - June 8, 2023 - PRLog -- By: Nehal El-Hadi, Daniel Merino, The Conversation, Carmen Alvaro Jarrin, Maria Zhivagui

Making yourself more beautiful can result in tangible, material rewards. Pretty privilege, as it is called, can lead to greater access to money and social capital, resulting in a better quality of life.

In Brazil, this understanding that beauty is important to one's social status and mental and emotional well-being has prompted the state to subsidize cosmetic surgery. But this pursuit of beauty has a dark side and can often mean exposure to harm.

And this isn't limited to extreme beautification practices, like extensive cosmetic surgery. People are also willing to endure potential risks in more mundane and everyday beauty treatments — like manicures.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak to an anthropologist and a cancer researcher about the potential harm inherent in seeking beauty treatments.

The Illusion of Choice

Carmen Alvaro Jarrín is an associate professor of anthropology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, in the U.S. They research cosmetic surgery in Brazil and looked at how the state came to support access to cosmetic procedures as part of the delivery of health care. The plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy had campaigned for access to cosmetic surgery, arguing that everyone had the right to be beautiful.

"It surprised me how many of them get plastic surgery, and spend a lot of money on beauty because they see it as a way to attain upward mobility," Jarrín said. Their book, The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil, examined how beauty became a health right.

Many of those who access state-subsidized clinics cannot afford cosmetic procedures privately. And these clinics come with a risk — often they are used as training centres and many patients have experimental procedures tested on them, sometimes with drastic effects.

"People believe that beauty gives you wealth. If you're born poor and you're beautiful, people think that it will give you upward mobility. Everybody was convinced that they would gain upper mobility," Jarrín explains. "Anthropologists have noticed that the more unequal a society is, and the less upward mobility there is, the more that people will take to these magical means. In Brazil, beauty has that kind of magical quality to it."

Access to cosmetic surgery promises better job opportunities and social mobility.

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https://theconversation.com/beauty-procedures-from-manicures-to-cosmetic-surgery-carry-risk-and-the-reward-of-a-better-life-podcast-207171