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by Virginia L. Blum, 356 pp, with illus, $29.95, ISBN 0-520-21723-3, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.

JAMA. 2004;292:743-744.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A botched nose job was the impetus behind Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. The author, Virginia Blum, is trying to make sense of her traumatic adolescent experience in light of her current desire for facial "rejuvenation." Drawing on her knowledge of literature and film, this English professor offers analyses of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Ovid's Pygmalion and the Statue, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the classic Twilight Zone episodes "The Eye of the Beholder" and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You," and the makeover stories of Elizabeth Taylor in Ash Wednesday and Barbra Streisand in The Mirror Has Two Faces, among others.

Blum argues that there is a "deep relationship between celebrity culture and cosmetic surgery" (p 53) and claims that we turn to cosmetic surgery because we locate our "transient" self-identities on the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Deborah Sullivan, PhD, Reviewer
Arizona State University
Tempe
Deborah.Sullivan@asu.edu