TY - BOOK ID - 78493049 TI - Saving face PY - 2014 SN - 147984005X 9781479840052 0814784100 9780814784105 9780814784112 0814784119 9780814784105 PB - New York New York University Press DB - UniCat KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General. KW - MEDICAL / Dermatology. KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General. KW - Surgery, Plastic KW - Physical-appearance-based bias. KW - Face KW - Disfigured persons. KW - Aesthetics KW - Beautiful, The KW - Beauty KW - Esthetics KW - Taste (Aesthetics) KW - Philosophy KW - Art KW - Criticism KW - Literature KW - Proportion KW - Symmetry KW - Aesthetic surgery KW - Cosmetic surgery KW - Plastic surgery KW - Reconstructive surgery KW - Surgery, Aesthetic KW - Surgery, Cosmetic KW - Surgery, Reconstructive KW - Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. KW - Plastic surgeons KW - Human face KW - Head KW - Pathognomy KW - Physiognomy KW - Appearance-based bias KW - Appearance-based discrimination KW - Appearance bias KW - Appearance discrimination KW - Body-size bias KW - Look-ism KW - Lookism KW - Looks-ism KW - Looksism KW - Physical appearance discrimination KW - Size bias, Body KW - Size discrimination KW - Sizeism KW - Sizism KW - Discrimination KW - Persons KW - Social aspects. KW - Social asepcts. KW - Psychology KW - Philosophy and psychology of culture KW - Sociology of culture KW - Radio broadcasting Aesthetics UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78493049 AB - 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. ER -