Aphrodite's Bosom

Breast augmentation is made possible by the intersections of dominant understandings and practices of gender, medicine and consumerism. In contemporary western world societies, the female breast is increasingly drawn into medicalized processes of commodification. Through practices of breast augmentation, the breast is able to be exchanged and transformed. The breast as a commodity is understood and (re)produced as a cultural object of femininity. Dominant understandings of femininity not only shape constructions of subjectivities for women but also act to normalize wider social arrangements. This book explores the discursive understandings that surround practices of breast augmentation at the site of cosmetic surgery websites in New Zealand. Online breast augmentation was represented in ways that indicated the processes of breast augmentation hold in place dominant notions of femininity. These notions of femininity were drawn upon to construct women as their bodies, and their bodies as idealized objects. As such, ideas of femininity reproduced in these websites worked to limit possibilities of choice for women in practices of breast augmentation in contemporary New Zealand society