Abstract
M.A. (Counselling Psychology)
Women who have undergone cosmetic procedures have received increasing attention in the mass media. Media representations of the ideal beauty standard and the normalization of cosmetic surgery have resulted in women changing their bodies through surgery and, as a consequence, identity itself becomes reconstructed. The aim of this study was to explore how South African newspaper reports construct or represent women who engage with cosmetic surgery. Newspapers in the South African context are more easily accessible to the average woman and are considered to be a reliable and trustworthy source of information. Guided by a poststructural epistemology, the notion of subject positioning was used as a conceptual tool to analyze the selected texts. Texts were sourced from archival data on the Sabinet online repository for South African newspapers. Segments from news reports were extracted from a sample of 43 articles sourced from 18 newspaper publications. Subject positions were analyzed according to Parker’s (1992) and Wilbraham’s (2004) discourse analysis guidelines. Findings included the following subject positions: women who had undergone cosmetic surgery; men who had undergone cosmetic surgery, or who offered an opinion on cosmetic surgery; and the professionals who perform the cosmetic procedures, or who have opinions on the women who undergo cosmetic surgery. From the analysis, four types of subject positions of women emerged. There were the bountiful subject, the wishful thinker, the self-confident subject, and the racially colonized subject. Recommendations for future research have been made in terms of broadening the scope of the study, as well as implications for medical professionals and people associated with the cosmetic surgery industry.