An ethnography that examines the culture of beauty and plastic surgery in Brazil
This ethnographic account of Brazil s emergence as a global leader in plastic surgery takes readers from Ipanema socialite circles to telenovela studios to the packed waiting rooms of public hospitals offering free cosmetic surgery.
Pretty Modern is a riveting account of Brazil's emergence as a global leader in plastic surgery. Intrigued by a Carnaval parade that mysteriously paid homage to a Rio de Janeiro plastic surgeon, anthropologist Alexander Edmonds conducted research that took him from Ipanema socialite circles to glitzy telenovela studios to the packed waiting rooms of public hospitals offering free cosmetic surgery. The result is provocative exploration of the erotic, commercial, and intimate aspects of beauty in a nation with extremes of wealth and poverty and a reputation for natural sensuality. Drawing on conversations with maids and their elite mistresses, divorced housewives, black celebrities, and favela residents aspiring to be fashion models, Edmonds analyzes what sexual desirability means and does for women in different social positions. He argues that beauty is a distinct realm of modern experience that does not simply reflect other inequalities. It mimics the ambiguous emancipatory potential of capital, challenging traditional hierarchies while luring consumers into a sexual culture that reduces the body to the brute biological criteria of attractiveness. Illustrated with color photographs, Pretty Modern offers a fresh theoretical perspective on the significance of female beauty in consumer capitalism.
“" Pretty Modern presents a wealth of ethnographic data, weaving together thick descriptions of hospital waiting rooms, television studios, and everyday conversations, illustrated with images of advertisements and frank portraits of Edmonds's informants." - Ashley Mears, e-misferica”
"Alex Edmond's book Pretty Modern is a remarkable account of cosmetic surgery - or plastica - in Brazil. It attempts to locate cosmetic surgery as a specific cultural practice in a particular location breaks with regular tired debates about whether cosmetic surgery is 'good' or 'bad', explaining instead what plastica means to its participants. The book entwines the views of both patients and surgeons - many of whom Edmonds spent considerable time with - in the notion of aesthetic health'." - Ruth Holliday, Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 34 No. 1, 2012 "A masterpiece. Pretty Modern is one of the most nuanced and beautifully crafted ethnographies out there."--Joao Biehl, Princeton University "A fresh, smart, insightful, entertaining and compelling book about a topic--cosmetic surgery--that many of us thought had self-combusted in the 1990s, amid irresolvable debates about whether women who wanted bigger breasts were subjects with agency or duped victims of the 'beauty myth'. Pretty Modern rises from the ashes of those debates to provide us with exciting new ways of thinking about what plastic surgery is, what it means and what it does. It is first-rate anthropology and a wonderfully perceptive study of Brazil."--Don Kulick, author of Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes "This is an articulate and eloquent introduction to the Brazil that we all knew existed, but were afraid to discuss." Latin American Review of Books
Alexander Edmonds is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.
"A masterpiece.Pretty Modernis one of the most nuanced and beautifully crafted ethnographies out there."-Jo
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