Saving Face : Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance / Heather Laine Talley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Talley, Heather Laine, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Surgery, Plastic--Social aspects.

Surgery, Plastic.

Physical-appearance-based bias.

Face--Social aspects.

Face.

Disfigured persons.

Aesthetics--Social asepcts.

Aesthetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Place of Publication:

2014.

New York, NY : New York University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Winner, Body and Embodiment Award presented by the American Sociological Association Imagine yourself without a face—the task seems impossible. The face is a core feature of our physical identity. Our face is how others identify us and how we think of our ‘self’. Yet, human faces are also functionally essential as mechanisms for communication and as a means of eating, breathing, and seeing. For these reasons, facial disfigurement can endanger our fundamental notions of self and identity or even be life threatening, at worse. Precisely because it is so difficult to conceal our faces, the disfigured face compromises appearance, status, and, perhaps, our very way of being in the world. In Saving Face, sociologist Heather Laine Talley examines the cultural meaning and social significance of interventions aimed at repairing faces defined as disfigured. Using ethnography,participant-observation, content analysis, interviews, and autoethnography, Talley explores four sites in which a range of faces are “repaired:” face transplantation, facial feminization surgery, the reality show Extreme Makeover, and the international charitable organization Operation Smile. Throughout, she considers how efforts focused on repair sometimes intensify the stigma associated with disfigurement. Drawing upon experiences volunteering at a camp for children with severe burns, Talley also considers alternative interventions and everyday practices that both challenge stigma and help those seen as disfigured negotiate outsider status.Talley delves into the promise and limits of facial surgery, continually examining how we might understand appearance as a facet of privilege and a dimension of inequality. Ultimately, she argues that facial work is not simply a conglomeration of reconstructive techniques aimed at the human face, but rather, that appearance interventions are increasingly treated as lifesaving work. Especially at a time when aesthetic technologies carrying greater risk are emerging and when discrimination based on appearance is rampant, this important book challenges us to think critically about how we see the human face.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. About Face

2. Facial Work

3. Making Faces

4. Not Just Another Pretty Face

5. Saving Face

6. Facing Off

7. At Face Value

Losing Face

Appendix. Methods, Methodologies, and Epistemologies

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

1-4798-4005-X

OCLC:

884647851