Response to Alka Menon’s “Cultural Gatekeeping in Cosmetic Surgery: Transnational beauty ideals in multicultural Malaysia”

In her article “Cultural Gatekeeping in Cosmetic Surgery: Transnational beauty ideals in multicultural Malaysia,” Alka Menon makes the following overarching claims: First, Malaysian cosmetic surgeons draw upon sources of and facilitate “transnational beauty ideals” from China, India, Korea, and the United States as they practice in Malaysia. Additionally, they help define those very ideals by encouraging the “looks” of Chinese and Indian features and then themselves act as “aesthetic agents” in Malaysian society. And finally, the surgeons translate standard cosmetic surgery practices into methods that are applicable and acceptable to the Malaysian people (of which many are Muslim) to both receive Malaysian culture and produce it as well. Menon, a medical sociologist, conducts ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia (and the United States) over the course of sixteen months. During this time, she interviews both surgeons and their patients, observes medical interactions and procedures, and attends plastic surgery professional organization meetings. Menon first features a discussion on cultural transnationalism stating that cultural products flow alongside national pride and character. Because cosmetic surgeons themselves shape national symbols (such as female idealized beauty), they can, by their actions, shape cultural perceptions and provide agency in the communal understanding of aesthetics. She indicates that the presence of many people groups within Malaysia (Chinese, Indian, Malay, etc.) provides for a certain cosmopolitanism, globalization, and progress into modernity despite existing racial and cultural tensions that may also be present. Malaysian cosmetic surgeons hold a unique position in this cosmopolitanism as “gatekeepers” or “tastemakers” of national identity and beauty in which they may influence the “look” of cosmetic surgery they perform. She finally notes the importance of catering to Muslim standards and people in Malaysia so that cosmetic surgery can be accessible to them as well as to non-Islamic individuals. 

Menon, in her conclusion, claims that Malaysia lacks (or has a less developed) a “national cultural industry” and that is one basis for cosmopolitanism and cultural fluidity she discusses as seen in cosmetic surgery practices. Colonialism undoubtedly hinders a nation’s development – economically, politically, and nationally. The Chinese and Indian sub-populations of Malaysia may have largely arrived in the nation as a result of British colonialism. However, they are two important facets of Malaysian multiculturalism living in Malaysia. As Malaysian cosmetic surgeons turn towards Chinese and Indian beauty ideals for their patients, is this practice actually a transnational approach to surgery and culturalism? Transnationalism needs to extend beyond the nation-state; if the cultures most appreciated are highly influential and present in Malaysia itself, does this practice display transnationalism at all? The surgeons themselves are not really turning elsewhere but instead are turning to communities within their own nation. This is not to say that Menon’s premise of the surgeons highly influencing Malaysian culture and being its tastemakers is false – it is just to indicate that the surgeons may be reaching into the multicultural state of Malaysia that allows for its cosmopolitanism. Speaking of which, I believe more attention should have been given to this concept. It does not clearly emerge from her article that multiculturalism produces more than race tensions and does in addition to racial divides allow for open-mindedness and flexibility in the face of diversity. This almost seems counter-intuitive. A broader discussion could have proved helpful to explain the emergence of cosmopolitanism, an essential idea to her overarching argument. This article may have been slightly more insightful had some of the interview work with the patients been included. By discussing only the statements of some of the cosmetic surgeons, Menon fails to provide the cultural, individual, and personal response to gatekeeping and tastemaking. This seems necessary (and therefore should have been included in the article) because even if the surgeons were advising and inserting opinions about the standard of surgical “looks” they might provide, those sentiments needed to imbue the larger population for the surgeons to truly be gatekeepers of transnational Malaysian culture. 

Questions:

1. Is the idea of transnational Malaysian culture compelling? Is cosmopolitanism?

2. Does Menon adequately show the surgeons’ or the general population’s responses to Western (American) or South Korean beauty standards within the context of cosmetic surgery?

3. Because “iterations of cosmetic surgery looks [are] likely also stratified along lines of class, gender, and nationality,” what (if at all) is the Malaysian cosmetic surgery look?

Quotes:

1. “Cosmetic surgeons exercised professional aesthetic and medical judgment in deciding whether a beauty ideal would physically and socially suit a given patient. However, unlike most gatekeepers, cosmetic surgeons were also simultaneously tastemakers and cultural producers. Surgeons did not just grant any request, but selectively developed looks from among the many beauty ideals brought in by patients. This tastemaking function allowed surgeons to maintain a consistent aesthetic brand that signaled their own cultural dispositions and aesthetic judgment. In addition, the process of materially constructing cosmetic surgery looks onto the bodies of individual patients was a form of translation work that can be considered cultural production.” (5)

2. “Malaysian cosmetic surgeons translated all of these ideals into concrete looks for specific bodies and populations. This differentiation maintained and reinforced existing racial and social divides in Malaysia while simultaneously opening up the possibility of appealing to larger pan-ethnic, religiously observant transnational markets. … It is important to emphasize that Malaysian cosmetic surgeons did not see themselves as in the business of creating beauty ideals. Rather, they sought to apply and translate them in constructing cosmetic surgery looks for specific patients.” (8)

3. Ultimately, “Malay” or “Muslim” as cultural identities to be marketized are more in process than is the case for “Asian,” which has been politically and economically mobilized across the region for years. (10)