Beauty perception of women before and after the experience of aesthetic surgery

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Sosyoloji Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2017

Öğrenci: CEYDA KARADAŞ

Danışman: FATMA UMUT BEŞPINAR AKGÜNER

Özet:

Physical appearance of women and criteria of defining the ideal women are widely discussed, and became important variables for women to percept and define themselves. The “importance” of beauty and having an outlook that matches with the contemporary norms of beauty are overemphasized and distributed by different tools. Combination of emphasis on “importance” of beauty and simplified access to aesthetic operations, create a misperception for women as an obligation for being beautiful to feel competent, integrated and empowered. This study aims to understand the transformation of beauty perception of women, who had an aesthetic surgery and see this act as a material, non-material investment, and a physical, emotional, pecuniary labour, for self and other women, and the hierarchy this perception transformation creates. To understand and analyse these questions, a survey applied to 20 women who had at least one aesthetic surgery, and five aesthetic surgeons, between September 2015 and December 2015. In this study, the “empowerment” that is believed to be “achieved” with the aesthetic surgery. Within this framework, different perspectives of Kathy Davis and Llwellyn Negrin about the subject are discussed. The question “if the alleging empowerment is resulted with an overall and real empowerment for all women, or it recreates the ongoing hierarchical norms” is asked in the study.