MY BODY IS MY ART - COSMETIC SURGERY AS FEMINIST UTOPIA

Cosmetic surgery seems - at first glance - to represent the epitome of the colonization and victimization of women through their bodies. In recent years however, postmodern feminist scholars have begun to explo re the possibilities of the technologized female body as a site for fe minist action. Through deliberate mimicry, alternative valorization, o r hyperbolic appropriation, repressive meanings attached to the surgic al alteration of women's bodies in the name of beauty can be destabili zed and transformed to feminist ends. One example of such a strategy i s the French performance artist Orlan who has designed a face for hers elf and had it surgically constructed in a series of video-taped opera tion/performances. Her art - or so she claims - is both a radical crit ique of feminine beauty and of the practice of cosmetic surgery. This article explores the possibilities and pitfalls of such dys(u)topian p erformances as a critical response to women's involvement in cosmetic surgery and, more generally, their usefulness for envisioning an alter native, feminist body/politics.