Women's magazines teem with its promises and horror stories. Feminists ardently debate its status as harmful or heroic. Surgeons and regulators compete to define which procedures can be offered and how. Through its representation, cosmetic surgery impacts on us all, not just those who go 'under the knife'.
This book argues that gender and cosmetic surger are engaged in a complex process of mutual constitution. It traces three major themes in cosmetic surgery discourse; nature, agency and vanity, across four important discursive areas: women's magazines; feminist scholarship; medical sources and regulatory debate, to map the effects of this process of constitution.
In conducting this enquiry, Cosmetic Surgery, Gender and Culture also questions contemporary cultural studies assumptions about how we read the media, offering new perspectives on issues such as the active reader and the polysemous properties of text.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART 1: TOOLS
Toolkit for a Modest Witness
Pressures of the Text: Intertextuality and Preferred Readings
PART 2: DISCOURSES
Women's Magazines: Glossing Femininity
Feminist Imaginary Bodies
The 'Art' of Cosmetic Surgery: Medicine, Metaphor and Meaning
The Regulation of Gender: Cosmetic Surgery, Regulatory Processes and Femininity
Conclusion
Bibliography

SUZANNE FRASER is a research fellow at the National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales. She has a PhD in Gender Studies, and has published in the areas of health, feminism and cosmetic surgery.