Estetik på klinik : Den estetiska kirurgins legitimerande retorik

Sammanfattning: This dissertation deals with how esthetic surgery as a phenomenon and as a pursuit has been constructed to attain cultural legitimacy, that is, how esthetic surgery has been presented, advocated, and shaped so as to make it seem a possible, reasonable, acceptable, and meaningful practice in the contemporary culture and in people-s lives. Temporally, the study period ranges from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. During that period, esthetic surgery made its breakthrough in Sweden as a practical pursuit and as a cultural phenomenon. Cultural legitimacy is a pivotal concept in the study. It is used here to denote that a pursuit or a phenomenon - in this case esthetic surgery - has attained a status in the public discourse that makes it seem conceivable and acceptable. In this dissertation, I study how this cultural legitimacy is established through expressions in media. I analyze the work of construction that is leading to esthetic surgery reaching that position from a focus on the rhetoric of legitimization, that is, how esthetic surgery is talked about so that cultural legitimacy can be attained. It is a matter of appealing to the public so that esthetic surgery is accepted as a body modification practice, available and relevant to everyone. The work with the material showed that creating justification, appeal, and credibility plays a prominent role in this construction. The promise inherent in esthetic surgery has to be presented as realistic and realizable, while simultaneously referring to culturally anchored values and defining these as associated with esthetic surgery. In this process justification, appeal and credibility have been linked to such dominating values as freedom, health and naturalness.