performed worldwide in 2004, second only to the Americas. Asians, South Ameri-
cans, and Arabs are also undergoing cosmetic procedures in increasing numbers. As
in the United States, these procedures are becoming increasingly affordable to the mid-
dle class and are being sought by men as well as women. The popularity of different
procedures, however, does vary by country.■In Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Colombia, Russia, and Romania, eyelid sur-
gery is the top operation.
■In Brazil, Argentina and Germany, liposuction is the most popular.
■In Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, and Slovenia, breast augmenta-
tion is the procedure performed most frequently.
■In Jordon, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, Taiwan, and France, nose reshaping tops
the list.Why eyelid surgery across Asia? Why nose work in the Middle East? Perhaps we
are seeing an emerging global standard of beauty due to globalization. Not only are
people living and working in more multinational settings, but also Western images
long exported worldwide by magazines, movies, and television have been accelerated
in recent years by the addition of satellite TV and the Internet. Like globalization in
other arenas, some influence goes both ways, but the dominant tendency is for beauty
standards to trend from West to East (Guteri and Hastings, 2003; Lewis, 2005).Changing Identity by Changing the Gendered Body: Transgenderism.Transgenderismis
an umbrella term that describes a variety of people, behaviors, and groups whose
identities depart from normative gender ideals of masculinity or femininity.
Transgendered individuals develop a gender identity that is different from the
biological sex of their birth; they array themselves along a continuum from those
who act in public as members of the sex other than the sex they were born, to
those who chemically (through hormone therapy) or surgically transform their
bodies into the body of the other gender. Transgenderism implies no sexual
orientation—transgendered individuals identify as heterosexual, homosexual,
bisexual, or asexual.
Think of gender identity and behavior along a continuum from “our culture’s def-
inition of masculine” to “our culture’s definition of feminine.” Some people feel con-
strained by gender role expectations and seek to expand these by changing their
behavior. Though there are significant penalties for boys who are effeminate (“sissies”)
and some, but fewer, penalties for girls who are “tomboys,” many adult men and
women continue to bend, if not break, gender norms in their
bodily presentation. Some may go as far as to use the props of
the opposite sex to challenge gender stereotypes; some people
find erotic enjoyment in this, while others do it to “pass” into
a forbidden world. Again, this runs along a continuum: At one
end are women who wear man-tailored clothing and power suits
to work; at the other end are those men and women who wear
full cross-gender regalia as a means of mockery and the plea-
sure of transgression. Transvestites regularly dress in the cloth-
ing of the opposite sex, for play or in everyday life.
Some people, though, feel that their biological sex doesn’t
match their internal sense of gender identity. Transgendered peo-
ple may feel a “persistent discomfort and sense of inappropri-
ateness about one’s assigned sex (feeling trapped in the wrong
body)” as the diagnosis for transsexualism in the American
Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual530 CHAPTER 16THE BODY AND SOCIETY: HEALTH AND ILLNESSTransgendered individuals may
have one biological sex and
present as the other gender,
or they may seek to surgically
make their biological sex and
socially presented gender the
same. Either way, they make
clear that gender is an embod-
ied performance. Here, Italian
actor and transgender political
candidate Wladimiro Guadagno
poses on a movie set.n