1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786774803321

Autore

Talley Heather Laine

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

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

©2014

ISBN

1-4798-4005-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (270 p.)

Classificazione

SOC026000MED017000SOC002000

Disciplina

305.908

Soggetti

Surgery, Plastic - Social aspects

Physical-appearance-based bias

Face - Social aspects

Disfigured persons

Aesthetics - Social asepcts

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.