Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery

by Elizabeth Haiken

"Haiken has written a humane, balanced history of cosmetic surgery, drawing with sensitivity and deftness on impressive archival sources, including surgeons' folders on prospective patients... Her book is a first-class exercise in medical history, raising intriguing questions about normalization, ideological manipulation, gender, ethnicity, and the profit motive in medicine."--Richard Davenport-Hines, Nature "What makes Venus Envy such an enthralling read is that alongside a host of macabre and 'no--really!' stories... there is a hugely intelligent and perceptive analysis of American culture and history going on."--London Times Face lifts, nose jobs, breast implants, liposuction, collagen injections -- the body at the end of the twentieth century has become endlessly mutable, and surgical alteration has become an accepted part of American culture. In Venus Envy, Elizabeth Haiken traces the quest for physical perfection through surgery from the turn of the century to the present. Drawing on a wide array of sources -- personal accounts, medical records, popular magazines, medical journals, and beauty guides -- Haiken reveals how our culture came to see cosmetic surgery as a panacea for both individual and social problems. "An informative, often engaging account of the history of cosmetic surgery in the United States."--Parade Magazine "Original, well-researched, and a pleasure to read. It constitutes an astute analysis of the modern commodification of the body and the role of the medical profession in such developments." -- Roy Porter, Times Higher Education Supplement "This is an important book, raising provocative questions about the ubiquity of cosmetic surgery in our culture... I'll certainly draw on its insights when counseling patients considering cosmetic surgery."--Janet E. Shepherd, M.D., Journal of the American Medical Association "An entertaining history and serious analysis of the tensions among professional medicine, entrepreneurial practitioners, and the mutable ideal of beauty that reminds us how unchanging is the American search for self-improvement... If Venus Envy is a history of cosmetic surgery, it is equally a political history of beauty."--Sharon Lieberman, Women's Review of Books

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Microhistory, Medicine

370 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 1997

Reviews

[Dasha]

Haiken highlights the cultural context in understanding the rise of plastic surgery's popularity. This challenges, accurately I believe, the idea that plastic surgery grew solely out of the technological advances of WWI. Instead, it was before WWI that the ground began to be laid for cultural foundations for such changes to be accepted. This book also provides an analysis of how liberal beliefs of success and economic competition created inferiority complexes in the marketplace that people sought to correct through improved looks from cosmetic surgery. Haiken also pays attention to gendered differences in the growing acceptance of cosmetic procedures. For example, men framed their use of facelifts around wanting increased economic success and men were also more likely to be the victims of mail order fraud as they were less likely to be open in their search for cosmetic work. Some mention of heterosexuality is mentioned but more investigation into how cosmetic work intersected with ideas of queerness and heterosexuality would likely be fruitful.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-researched book about the history of cosmetic surgery, written by former University of British Columbia and University of Tennessee associate professor Elizabeth Haiken.

Content-wise, I thought it was super interesting. Of course, I did go out of my way to read a book about cosmetic surgery published in 1997, so clearly this is a social and medical field I'm already interested in, but Haiken mostly lets the reader draw their own conclusions, with a few probing questions along the way.

This book takes us from cosmetic/plastic surgery's advent around WWI (a response to soldiers' facial injuries during trench warfare!) all the way to "present" day debate around the experimentations with and eventual invention of breast implants (I don't think BIA-ALCL had even been discovered yet!), with discussions on facelifts, nose jobs, and more along the way. This book also discusses the history of cosmetic surgery in relation to race, age, beauty standards, and femininity, and for that research, especially in regards to race, I think this text was ahead of its time.

The fact that the research stops in the late 90s means that many procedures very common, and hotly debated, today, such as the BBL, the rise of filler as a "non-invasive" alternative to surgery, etc., aren't covered. But this book is a great text for understanding the medical and cultural foundation that our current trends were built off of. She writes of Botox as a new invention. Can you imagine!

I found the language to be pretty straightforward, and of course since it was written by an academic, academic at times. One reviewer wrote this book was "incredibly dense." Another reader responded with what are essentially my thoughts as well...it's a scholarly work. It's not a cosmo article - thank goodness! I did not find the work difficult to get through, in fact I found the opposite: I think Haiken synthesized all the research and facts she traced quite well into a tidy (well, as tidy as possible) story of medical and social change.

This was on my "want to read" list for quite some time, and I'm happy I got to it! A worthwhile read for sure.

Highlights:
•the story about "Facelifts on the Taxpayer"/Pentagon-funded cosmetic surgery: military wives getting facelifts and other procedures as part of VA health care, a minor 1970s scandal
•the theory that this entire enterprise is Americans trying to find private, personal solutions to social problems..."both producers and products" (Boomhauer voice: mmmhmmm)
•all of Chapter 3, which is on the making of a consumer culture in the field of cosmetic surgery. I'd say we currently live in a much, much more amplified version of this
•all the old ads Haiken shows
•the realization ones makes while reading that this hustle is much older than initially understood - I swear every instagram ad you see or gadget or cream you see on youtube or wherever is derivative of something some quack peddled back in the 1930s, if not earlier
•learning that the moral and ethical questions asked about cosmetic surgery now were things its very founders were considering and arguing about between world wars, before the specialty even fully took shape
•the history of the once-diagnosed "inferiority complex"..."defined by the patient rather than the surgeon." Like I said, this hustle, this everything, is so old
•the 1911 book called Nostrums and Quackery. Amazing phrase. Black Midi song called "Nostrums and Quackery" when???

I'll leave with two quotes, the first from Venus Envy the second from Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde
"No longer was it merely vanity surgery; instead it was 'psychiatry with a scalpel,' vital to mental health"
"to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willing to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral"

[Lisa Westerfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

READING DIARY- 4

A very interesting perspective of the state and history of plastic surgery told from a point of view close to 25 years ago. Many of the issues remain the same although some attitudes have shifted. Also comparing the timeframe with now brings up plastic surgery involving gender identity and with pop culture shows like 'Botched' demonstrating how dangerous it can be to go off the reservation sort of speak to get cheaper work at a patient's detriment. Michael Jackson is mentioned and oh Lordy. It is interesting to view how changing beauty standards fuel elective surgery.

[Deanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh! I rarely want to throw a book down and stop reading before the end, but this one took Herculean effort for me to finish!!
Actually it was very interesting subject matter, but the writing was so incredibly dense - it was written like a textbook (I'm glad I'm not in one of the author's classes at University of Tennessee.)
The major points of the book were very repetitive. A number of times I had to say out loud, "OK, OK, I get it already!". I get the feeling that this book began its life as thesis and someone felt it would make a good book if it could just have more words...

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Venus Envy is not only a great title, it's a immaculately researched text. While a bit old - I would love to see updates covering the current trends in cosmetic surgery, such as BBLs and buccal fat removal - I think this should be a foundational text for anyone interested in either the physical or cultural history of cosmetic surgery. While Haiken is writing from a feminist perspective, she uses a neutral tone for most of book, relating the facts as they happened in both advances in surgical technique and the social pressures driving demand. Haiken's focus on social pressures tends towards ethnic and racial prejudices (nose jobs, double eyelid surgery, skin lightening), but doesn't shy away from cross ethnic pressures (breast reduction and augmentation), and also engages with the eventual pressures on men as well as women (hair plugs, penile enhancement).

Haiken engages with the reasoning for cosmetic surgery with empathy and compassion, and the catch-22 that plastic surgeons placed themselves in with, honestly, more kindness than I am prone to. She also goes over the pathologization of normal human variation, and the need of cosmetic surgery to focus on individual solutions to social problems.

My only critiques are that revisions and follow-up surgeries are glossed over a bit - in one case, Haiken mentions a woman who had work done on her calves (not sure whether it was plumping or reducing), and there were so many complications that she ended up needing both legs amputated. Migrating wax injections are talked about in no more detail than that. Given her resources, it's possible there was no more detail than that, but I just feel certain that of the thousands of people who had wax injected into their bodies, the migration of that wax had some follow-up issues - how many people had it removed? Was it possible to have it removed, when it was not an encapsulated material? The other critique is that Haiken frequently forward and backward in dates when supporting a certain argument. She generally stays within a decade, but I found it a little confusing, and would have preferred a chronological approach, since it would have aligned with the arguments about developing social pressures.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, man. I would’ve given this book 5 stars - the only reason why I didn’t was because of the publication date (1997), and so much has changed from then to now when it comes to plastic surgery. I’d love to see an updated version - but to be fair, a lot of what’s in the book (particularly the drive behind getting such surgeries) hasn’t changed.

Overall, it is an incredibly comprehensive review of the history of plastic surgery, (how it developed and cultural impact) and one I would recommend to anyone either interested in medical history or thinking about getting a procedure done. Having worked with a certain kind of medical device professionally, a lot of this was rehashing old territory for me - but with further information that really made me cringe (in seeing how long there’s been issues with said device and the suppression / underplaying of serious medical issues that arise post surgery) - and how some of it still hasn’t changed, even in 2024.

[Becka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry but fairly comprehensive - a lot of info in here that I wouldn't have otherwise found.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stepwise review of western cosmetic surgery’s founders; ideally would include the ancient and Middle Ages, although maybe no proof exists

[Lizzie Stark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched and chock-full of good details. Recommended for anyone researching the topic!