Elective Breast Surgery and Body Image: A Poststructural-Phenomenological Investigation

This dissertation examines what happens when elective breast surgery intervenes on women at the level of their body images. In this theoretical-empirical project, I compare practitioner discourses and patient narratives of the impact of breast augmentation and reduction surgeries on female body image. To this end, I conducted two case studies: first, a feminist-poststructuralist discourse analysis of practitioner-authored studies on elective breast surgery and body image, as published in peer-reviewed journals; and second, a feminist-phenomenological inquiry into womens first-hand accounts of their experiences of these surgical procedures. I argue that body image is, at one and the same time, an uncritically accepted concept that encourages normative understandings of surgical outcomes and a productive lens through which women make sense of how surgery instigates a reorientation of the body and its habits. The unique contributions of this project are that it brings together poststructuralism and phenomenology so as to concurrently examine practitioner and patient perspectives of the effects of surgery, and critically examines the mainstream notion and widespread acceptance of body image.