Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil

by Alexander Edmonds

Pretty Modern is a riveting account of Brazil’s emergence as a global leader in plastic surgery. Intrigued by a Carnaval parade that mysteriously paid homage to a Rio de Janeiro plastic surgeon, anthropologist Alexander Edmonds conducted research that took him from Ipanema socialite circles to glitzy telenovela studios to the packed waiting rooms of public hospitals offering free cosmetic surgery. The result is provocative exploration of the erotic, commercial, and intimate aspects of beauty in a nation with extremes of wealth and poverty and a reputation for natural sensuality. Drawing on conversations with maids and their elite mistresses, divorced housewives, black celebrities, and favela residents aspiring to be fashion models, Edmonds analyzes what sexual desirability means and does for women in different social positions. He argues that beauty is a distinct realm of modern experience that does not simply reflect other inequalities. It mimics the ambiguous emancipatory potential of capital, challenging traditional hierarchies while luring consumers into a sexual culture that reduces the body to the brute biological criteria of attractiveness. Illustrated with color photographs, Pretty Modern offers a fresh theoretical perspective on the significance of female beauty in consumer capitalism.

Genres: Anthropology, Ethnography, Nonfiction, Brazil, Read For School

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half was brilliant. Second half went a bit abstract for my tastes but was still pretty darn good. Would recommend to anyone interested in anthropology of Brazil, the body, etc.

Encountered a few errors that made me feel alternately too nerdy/chuffed to be in the know. (Naomi Campbell is NOT American, the most recent Constitution was finished in 1988 NOT 1989, and that's NOT what farofeiro means... ) That actually made me think, hell maybe I CAN write my ethnography one day too...?

[Karah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's difficult for me not to enjoy a book on Brazil. I agree with a previous reviewer on the author's mislabeling of a luminary: on page 213, he states Naomi Campbell is African-American. Naomi Campbell is a confirmed black British woman. Other than that, I noticed no other errors. I prefer when ethnographies stick exclusively to oral history. Some of the analysis could go over some people's heads.

I read this on my initiative and it was a pleasurable use of time.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant ethnography. Edmonds touches on the structural, cultural, psychological, and historical factors that contribute not only to constructions of beauty but also to the shifting conceptualizations of therapy, treatment and enhancement. He uses theory incredibly well, weaving it throughout and the book is consequently a fascinating, informative and fun read.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brazil was one of the last nations to legally abolish the transatlantic slave trade (officially). It would seem strange then, that a nation whose psychic wounds should be the rawest would have the more celebratory and less oppressive view of race (at least when compared to the Americans or the English).

This is of course an outsider's view of Brazil, and is based mostly on the glimpses we get of things like Carnival and the mass media on offer (ranging from telenovelas to pornography). It's a poor man's way to view another culture, but short of travel or fieldwork, such thumbnail sketches are sometimes all we have to go on.

Alexander Edwards does a good job of showing how, in Brazil, the barrier between elective and medical surgery is blurred by a whole host of beliefs (or maybe neuroses) about which traits it's desirable to have and which are to be avoided like the plague. The general rule seems to be that Europeans age poorly but have finer features, while Caribbean, Latin, and African peoples age better and their bodies withstand the vagaries of life (especially pregnancy) better than the Anglos. In one tragic moment, the author visits a woman who is in a clinic to have her "Negroid nose corrected." In another, brutally candid passage, the author explains that the racial caste system in Brazil is bound (or has been bound) for a long time by the following rule: "Whites for marriage, brown for sex, and black for work."

The case studies, fieldwork, and interviews the author conducts are solid, for the most part. The lattice of theory grates, distracts, and finally maddens. In the end, Edmonds has no good excuse for spending so much time with continental philosophers, whose ideas he and his subjects admit, were maybe in vogue for a generation or two in pre-Revolutionary Brazil, but really have no salience in Latin America. Sigmund Freud himself once claimed that the Irish were impervious to his methods; my guess is that the farther afield of Austria one goes (both in terms of time, away from the fin-de-siecle culture and the actual seats of the Hapsburg Monarchy) the less relevant Freud becomes. Ditto for the other, later European thinkers the author brings up in the course of the book.

There's some good stuff in here, and Edmonds is a solid cultural anthropologist, sociologist, and all-around thinker. In my opinion he would be better served by relying more on his own instincts, his interview subjects, and a little less on postmodern/post-structuralist/post (fill in the blank) theory. Mixed recommendation.

[Yasmine Kroknes-Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful read that discusses how the fetishistic logic of fashion is extended “into the body”. The first section stood out in its discussion of how the therapeutic rationale for cosmetic surgery came to be in Brazilian culture, and how the state subsidises many of these highly optional surgeries in the name of one’s “right to beauty”. Would have liked a deeper dive into the interview subjects as opposed to a more theoretical approach to the topic, given that select theories struggle to keep up with the actuality of beauty perception in Latin America.

[Savannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Yes let me write a whole book about women getting plastic surgery and never focus on the patriarchal beauty standards and the historical use of appearance as a means to achieve goals like higher class or marriage because women were made submissive in society. Oh I’ll acknowledge it, but then immediately segway into why patriarchy is just an excuse and women are just vain”