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Rites and rituals

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Fake breasts and power: Gender, class and cosmetic surgery. Drawing on on-going ethnographic research with young, white, working class British women who have paid for breast augmentation surgery, this article addresses questions about consumption, class and gender. It sets out to explore the relationship between agency, identity and the consumption of ‘fake’ breasts and the factors that make cosmetic surgery a meaningful part of a sample of young women's social world. The article attempts to identify how participants use ‘fake’ breasts in order to reposition themselves in terms of gender and class hierarchies.

At the same time however, it remains critical of the structural context in which this form of consumption represents either the only or the best strategy through which to attain their goals. In so doing, it aims to contribute to wider feminist debates on cosmetic surgery and agency through a focus on the market and the structural context within which women choose to consume fake breasts. Highlights Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. Personal Rites of Passage and the Reconstruction of Self by John W. Schouten. Surgery as ritual. By TONYA CLAYTON It’s a day almost like any other in the operating room. A nurse sets up an IV, a technician lays out shiny instruments and an anesthesiologist makes last-minute checks.

But patient and surgeon are occupied with less-conventional preparations. The patient, who has come for a new breast, walks in and positions two small rocks and two photographs on a rolling surgical tray. She then sits on the operating table, knee-to-knee and hand-in-hand with her doctor. The two talk softly, glancing now and then at the altar-on-a-tray. The physician asks her patient what today’s surgery means to her, beyond the addition of a body part. The surgeon is Loren Eskenazi, MD, class of ’90, and that moment of pre-op connection is one way she honors the age-old urge to engage in ritual. Transformational in more ways than one Lydia Barrett, a 42-year-old software executive from Pleasanton, Calif., says she knew in March, after her 14th unsuccessful infertility treatment: “It’s time.” Comments? The%20Real%20Me. 9012773.