Winner, Body and Embodiment Award presented by the American
Sociological Association Imagine yourself without a face-the task
seems impossible. The face is a core feature of our physical
identity. Our face is how others identify us and how we think of
our 'self'. Yet, human faces are also functionally essential as
mechanisms for communication and as a means of eating, breathing,
and seeing. For these reasons, facial disfigurement can endanger
our fundamental notions of self and identity or even be life
threatening, at worse. Precisely because it is so difficult to
conceal our faces, the disfigured face compromises appearance,
status, and, perhaps, our very way of being in the world. In Saving
Face, sociologist Heather Laine Talley examines the cultural
meaning and social significance of interventions aimed at repairing
faces defined as disfigured. Using ethnography,
participant-observation, content analysis, interviews, and
autoethnography, Talley explores four sites in which a range of
faces are "repaired:" face transplantation, facial feminization
surgery, the reality show Extreme Makeover, and the international
charitable organization Operation Smile,. Throughout, she considers
how efforts focused on repair sometimes intensify the stigma
associated with disfigurement. Drawing upon experiences
volunteering at a camp for children with severe burns, Talley also
considers alternative interventions and everyday practices that
both challenge stigma and help those seen as disfigured negotiate
outsider status. Talley delves into the promise and limits of
facial surgery, continually examining how we might understand
appearance as a facet of privilege and a dimension of inequality.
Ultimately, she argues that facial work is not simply a
conglomeration of reconstructive techniques aimed at the human
face, but rather, that appearance interventions are increasingly
treated as lifesaving work. Especially at a time when aesthetic
technologies carrying greater risk are emerging and when
discrimination based on appearance is rampant, this important book
challenges us to think critically about how we see the human face.
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