Beauty, Women's Bodies and the Law

What makes a womans body beautiful? Plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery and non-surgical interventions such as Botox are changing womens bodies physically and affecting cultural notions and expectations of what it means to be a woman. Yet where does the law stand? Is the renovation of womens bodies legal? This book explores a range of topics, including: whether shape-changing by surgical and non-surgical means is really what women want; the question of legal intervention when operations, injections and other methods go wrong; the impact of consent determinations on whether women can or cannot freely seek changes to their body structure; and the role which culture and social expectations play in womens decision-making. Taking a legal perspective on the vast range of beauty interventions available to women, Scutt discusses womens perceptions of body and beauty, pressures on women to conform to idealised notions of the perfect womans body, and outcomes of legal actions including those taken by individual women who are unhappy with results, as well as those launched against companies trading in products advertised as safe and for womens benefit. Beauty, Womens Bodies and the Law will appeal to readers with an interest in womens and gender studies, law, and cultural studies.