204 RüdigerKunow
mastectomy women: "The emphasis upon the cosmetic after surgery
reinforces this society's stereotype of women, that we are only what we
lookorappear..."(58).
Appearance is quite obviously a key word in this context, as can be
further illustrated by a brief look at a particularly notorious field where
the desire for the normal, however spectral, has long asserted itself:
cosmetic surgery. "[B]ecoming surgical" has been read, especially by
second-wave feminists, as cultural expression of the anxiety that many
women have historically felt and continue to feel about their bodies.
Improving"looks"bysurgicalinterventionis in this perspectivealsoan
act of intervention of biology-based norms in the private sphere of
women. This intervention can also be read dialectically as an inverted
acknowledgementofexistingvisualnorms.
AsVirginiaBlumhasshown,manyofthesenormsoriginateinU.S.
celebrity culture. The rise since the 1930s of the star system in the
motionpictureindustryfueledtheemergenceandbolsteredtheauthority
of normative understandings of what the human body, and especially a
woman's body, should look like—and look is a key term here. Visually
high-profile people such as actors and actresses on TV or the silver
screen are still held out by the media as normative embodiments of
personalitybasedontheir"goodlooks"thatoughttobeemulated(Blum
147;Heyes11).Herethemediavoicesofoughtnessdonotonlyanchor
the distribution of the sensible, they also regulate the distribution of the
visible. What "going surgical" produces reinforces the idea that looks
really matter, that they do transform the social and cultural presence,
evenstatus,ofaperson.
Blum's argument concerning the symbiotic relationship between the
cultofcelebrityandthecultofthe"bodybeautiful"isreflectedalsoina
scene from Arthur Miller's playDeath of a Salesman(1949) which
registers the grip of these normativities even on those living in the
shadow of the American Dream: especially Willy Loman's life is
directedby(whatheerroneouslyperceivesas)thevoiceofoughtness,a
voice that he repeatedly hallucinates in the words of his (allegedly?)
successfulbrotherBen.Willyalsotriestopassthenormsheinternalized
on to his sons. Aside from the assemblage of norms defining the
"American Dream," another important component is that of the "body
beautiful": "Bernard [the neighbors' son who goes off to Harvard] can
get the best marks in school, y'understand, but when he gets out in the