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CANCELED: American Plastic: Credit Cards, Boob Jobs, and Our Quest for Perfection

March 12, 2020 @
7:00 p.m.
- 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time
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Laurie Essig headshotDue to evolving concerns surrounding COVID-19, this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule, so please stay posted for future announcements!

Cosmetic surgery is not just about the production of the body, but how the body gets produced within particular systems of power. Most cosmetic surgery in the US is financed through debt, and most people who get cosmetic surgery are not wealthy. They are typically women — mostly white, mostly straight — who imagine a better world is possible if they spend money they don’t have to look younger, sexier, and thinner. In other words, more like what our culture imagines to be feminine and desirable. Laurie Essig is Professor and Director of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. In this talk, she will consider how the cosmetically altered body is a product of a variety of structures — from porn to the deregulation of banking under neoliberalism — and is deeply embedded in gender, race, and class.

Admission is free and open to the public.

This event is co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities; the Department of Economics; the Department of Political Science through the Chester Bland Fund; and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Clark University.

Details

Date:
March 12, 2020
Time:
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Venue