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chapter three “Tattooed Still” The Inscription of Female Agency  The erasure of disfiguration from the female body, enacted rhetorically in Herman Melville’s Typee and in the memoirs of Susan Thompson Lewis Parrish, became a reality in the late nineteenth century with advancements in medicine and, especially, aesthetic surgery.1 Women no longer needed to rely exclusively on the veil, as did Olive Oatman and the fictional Josephine Franklin, to divert the public gaze from their marked faces. Essential to the presentation of these innovative surgical methods to the public, however, was an assumed relationship between bodily modification, class, and gender. Appealing to readers ’ reverence for “high art,” religion, and domesticity, for example, an 1898 advertisement for the John H. Woodbury Dermatological Institute jubilantly informed readers of Leslie’s Weekly that they could “go . . . and get a new face” (see figure 11). The human body is represented here as the “hurried canvas” of Nature, which demands to be “retouch[ed] . . . with the genius of the Raphaels of the scalpel.” In capital letters at the top of the page, the advertisers insist emphatically that “THE NEW SURGERY FOLLOWS THE LINES OF HIGH ART,” thereby reassuring readers that aesthetic surgery is an artistic process to be distinguished from other, presumably less-sophisticated forms of bodily modification such as the tattoo, as well as other medical procedures. Because such arguments for aesthetic surgery appealed directly to the middleclass goal of potentially limitless social advancement, they had to be carefully phrased. As Sander Gilman points out, “the very wellspring of aesthetic surgery” is “the discourse of passing.” “The boundary between reconstructive and aesthetic surgery was distinguished on the basis of the introduction of procedures that were seen as enabling individuals to ‘pass.’ ‘Aesthetic’ procedures were and are those that enable individuals to pass into a category that they perceive as different from themselves” (24–25). Although Gilman’s discussion of passing clearly borrows from the racial discourse of the nineteenth century, it can just as easily refer to the subversion of class barriers. Thus the Woodbury Institute can be seen as simultaneously playing on clients’ desires to subvert the social 74 “Tattooed Still” • 75 hierarchy and sanctioning such transgressions by using the rhetoric of high art. This tactic allowed middle-class readers to believe that if they found such an appeal convincing, they were already, somehow inherently, destined to be more than middle class anyway. Anticipating protests against “the change of a single lineament with which birth had endowed us, for the sole sake of gaining comeliness,” the Woodbury Institute claims that every human being is charged with “the higher duty of looking like a god in whose image we were created.” Indeed, this duty is even translated into religious terms: “It may be held as a high and solemn precept of the religion which uplifts and spiritualizes that every man and woman should look as well as science, art, and artificer shall permit.” The advertisement goes on to claim that aesthetic surgery is a domestic as well as a religious duty: “Change your face, if it be ugly,” should be written in every home. Much of sorrow and misery this gospel would wipe away. A husband whose features are awry should have no shame or hesitation in bringing them as nearly as possible into conformity with the outlines of the Apollo Belvedere. A wife whose comeliness is marred by some congenital malformation of countenance owes it to herself, her children unborn, and above all to her future happiness, that the image which looks out at her from her mirror should grow as nearly as possible into the likeness of Venus Aphrodite. Unattractiveness and deformity are represented as domestic problems that bring “sorrow and misery” to the home, which would be happy if only both husband and wife were physically attractive. The impact of the husband’s attractiveness, however, is not specified; he is merely told that he should have no “shame or hesitation” in seeking to improve his appearance through surgery. The wife’s duty is more clearly articulated; she is reminded that her “marred . . . countenance” affects her own self-image as well as her unborn children. Although the advertisement is not entirely clear on this point, it seems to indicate that surgical alteration of the woman’s “congenital malformation” will lessen the risk of her children inheriting the same condition. It implies that the “future happiness” of her marriage and her family depend on her decision to...

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