Rethinking consumer embodiment: a practice based view of breast augmentation

© 2020 Aphrodite VlahosThe body is integral to consumption. Consumers feed, groom, dress, adorn, and alter their bodies. However, relatively few studies examine the body as a site of enquiry. This research seeks to understand the body as a site of consumption and draws from a long-standing tradition in sociology that treats the body and identity as intertwined in a personal project whereby the body is shaped through desired identity/ies. In this way, the body is framed as an obstacle that may either block identity projects, or as a static possession to be modified in line with these values. However, questions remain as to the ongoing process of shaping, interpreting and experiencing the body. I ask what are the embodied factors that contribute to ongoing body change, and what is the role of social others in shaping consumers intimate preferences? My research answers these questions through extended netnography, coupled with in-depth interviews of young women’s experiences with breast augmentation surgery. My findings show how the body and body management acts as a contested site of identity and involves complex social relations. I find that consumers experience their bodies through a desired identity, but that this desired identity is shaped by market-mediated materials, social others and the passage of time. Family and friends seek to make the body social by providing their own opinions and knowledge in ways that stabilise and destabilise consumer plans over the body. I find that consumers must continuously engage in a process of re-working their expectations, desired identity and body throughout the process of wanting, planning for, and receiving body-modification