Material World: Cosmetic tourism (2024)

The Material World Column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent Daily Mirror headline ran ‘Mum of five dies after butt-lift treatment’. It explained how Alice Delsie Preet Webb failed to recover from an operation by an unregistered practitioner which involved injecting hyaluronic acid and dermal fillers into the backside (a so-called ‘Brazilian butt-lift’). This apparently was the first time anyone in the UK had died from this procedure. But, as confirmed in a recent article about ‘cosmetic tourism’ in the Times by Sarah Ditum, such outcomes are far more common when people (largely women) decide to take a holiday abroad and at the same time have cheap surgery done on various parts of their body they consider need improvement. She referred to a website which asks the question: ‘Why not take full advantage of the charming beaches and sunshine while sparing some time for dental treatment?’

The trouble is that it sometimes goes wrong and people end up with wonky teeth, a lopsided smile, uneven size breasts, tummy folds rather than tucks, and even worse. In fact, since 2019, as the article tells us, ‘at least 28 British medical tourists have died following treatment in Turkey’. And that’s not counting the much larger number who return home with complications which they then need to try and get fixed by the NHS. Of course, many of the thousands who do this each year are lucky and for them it works out as they would want. But it’s definitely a gamble and, according to the article, the reason women are prepared to take that gamble is that they want to be, as the article puts it ‘the best version of themselves’ and not ‘substandard’. And, given the prohibitive cost of such surgery in the UK by regulated medical professionals, they see no alternative but to seek it out more cheaply in less regulated countries – Thailand, Mexico, Slovakia or – the most common destination – Turkey.

Society of the spectacle

But why is it that people want to look different from the way they are in reality? In the late 1960s the French writer Guy Debord published The Society of the Spectacle, which presented the idea that ‘all that once was directly lived has become mere representation’. His point was that, because of the atomised and consumerist nature of capitalist society, an obsession with outward appearance (ie ‘the spectacle’) had taken the place of the authentic reality of social life and relationships. People’s lives were mediated by images of perfection which they were made to feel they had to live up to. This led them to focus on the superficial and become alienated from their fellow humans and from socially beneficial interaction.

Though this was theorised more than 50 years ago, it is surely more relevant than ever today. While it is true that, in any kind of society, people may find certain aspects of their physical being less than satisfactory, they are more likely to focus on that if other aspects of their life fail to offer them satisfaction and the ability to fulfil their natural talents and capacities.

This is precisely the case in modern capitalism where the vast majority of us are obliged to expend most of our energies working for an employer in activities we are unlikely to have chosen freely but are dictated by the needs of the market on the employer’s side and the need to keep the wolf from the door on the worker’s side. And this work, including the conditions in which it is carried out, is unlikely to represent any kind of real fulfilment of the individual’s personal needs or aptitudes. So is it any wonder if, outside working hours, workers’ minds are occupied with superficialities – sporting spectacles, stars of entertainment, the lives of royalty and other ‘celebs’, and also perceived flaws in their own physical appearance?

Life blood

Capitalism’s need to constantly find ways of supplying its life blood – profit – means that it can only seek to relentlessly sell things, to provide the means for workers to cultivate and spend money on those superficialities. So it’s no surprise that, for example, music concerts starring people’s ‘idols’ are promoted with ticket prices as high as they are likely to be able to scrape together money or credit for. Nor is it any surprise that, held back as they are from fulfilling their real talents or needs by lives dominated by wage and salary work, the feelings of powerlessness and inferiority this engenders make them easy prey to the cult, to the idol, to the hero, to the conspiracy theory, and to the cheap cosmetic procedures promised by potentially dubious practitioners.

In the society of the ‘quick buck’ we live in, tainted as it is by money and the profit system, should we therefore be surprised if the products we are offered for purchase do not serve the purpose they claim to but upset our expectations, and even – in the case of botched cosmetic procedures – make our life even more uncomfortable than we perceived it as in the first place? It’s time we got rid of the false value system that puts appearance before substance, that puts ‘looking good’ over being truly human.

Howard Moss

The Banality of Everyday Life (2003)

From the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

"As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere material survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life . . ."

6.30am. Get up, get dressed, go downstairs. Put the kettle on and tune in to the relentless drone of the TV. Some reporter in battle fatigues is bringing the dead victims of corporate America to you live, right to your breakfast table. Sanitised images of a dirty war wash over you while you eat cornflakes: smiling men in uniform, tanks crossing a desert, explosions at night, thin, barefoot children petted by US marines. You're not quite sure whether this is real or a re-run of some old propaganda film; you can't quite make the connection between blasts in the sky and people dying. But you haven't time to think or feel: you wash, brush your teeth, put on your coat and are out of the door.

"The crowd commutes in a brutish weariness . . . "

Getting on the bus you ignore the woman struggling with a pushchair and the madman who tells you to fuck off. On public transport you meet your fellow workers in an atmosphere of shared tedium that stifles communication. Sitting next to a face as blank as yours, you protect your body space and avoid eye contact. Jolted around on a grimy bus, you keep your head down and blend with the herd. Welcome to the morning rush hour.

Already you're thinking of what you'll do when the daily grind is over. Outside work, you can be yourself. Outside work, time is your own. Except that it's packaged up, advertised and sold back to you as free time: time to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, time to drink Budweiser, time to wear Adidas, time to holiday in Ibiza. A measured amount of time freed up for consumption.

"The obligation to work alienates the passion for creation . . ."

At work, time is money. You work hard, performing your tasks efficiently but with a bored detachment. Tapping at the keys of a computer, you churn out meaningless words and numbers; on the assembly line you churn out shoddy goods in the name of mass production. It never occurs to you that before it became labour, work was creative, the pleasure taken in it offsetting the hours of effort. It never occurs to you that once people had control over how and when they worked. Lacking creative work and control, you have only wages to ameliorate your labour.

But money buys illusions. You don't just buy a car, a washing machine, a pair of trainers; you buy self-expression, individuality, contentment, a way of life. Created by marketing gurus and peddled through the media, lifestyles come conveniently packaged at the local department store. Happiness is carried home in a plastic bag. You consume illusions. Retail is therapy.

"Forgetting life, one identifies with a range of images . . ."

The evening rush hour: same as the morning, but in reverse

You get home, make something to eat, put up your feet and turn on the TV. The familiar round of soaps, game shows and reality TV, schedule your week: Monday, Coronation Street; Tuesday, Who Wants to be a Millionaire; Wednesday, Big Brother.

On the small screen, celebrities enjoy romance and adventure on your behalf. You watch passively as they compensate for your inability to lead a fulfilling life. Relating more to a character in a soap than to your neighbour, you're under the illusion of sharing a real human relationship. Separated from your fellow human beings, an illusory connection is better than no connection.

Waking from a doze, you turn off the TV and crawl up to bed. Before sleep you consider tomorrow's routine: same shit, different day. You don't think that there's a better way to live. You don't think you have the power to change things. Yet the house of cards is built on your complicity. We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom. You sleep. You don't dream.

Lynn Wright