Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance

2 Facial Work: Aesthetic Surgery as Lifesaving Work

24 > 25 Goffman defines the concept “face” as “an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes.”2 Put more simply, our face is our projected self or the self-image we deploy in interaction with other human beings.3 Face is not inherent to an individual. Rather, as Goffman notes, face is “on loan to him [sic] from society.”4 Others respond to and, in the process, affirm our face, but the threat of losing face demands ongoing attempts to save face. For Goffman, “face-work” describes the “actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face.”5 Throughout social interaction, we routinely engage in face-work, and this tacit cooperation preserves our self-image and the face of others . Face-work may be an essential condition of human life, but it is anything but mindless behavior. Maintaining face relies on processes of avoidance (circumventing potential threats to interaction), defensive measures (guiding interaction away from particular topics and activities ), protective maneuvers (employing discretion and deception), and corrective processes (fixing threats to one’s face). Face-work involves calculation and social cunning. It is not consciously manipulative work necessarily, but it is deeply strategic.6 Without face-work, social interaction falls apart.7 Essentially, social interaction involves processes of meaning making , through which human sociality is forged.8 The significance of social interaction cannot be overstated. Consider that the establishment of human culture relies on the emergence of shared meanings, which only emerge via interaction among humans. Traditionally, symbolic interactionism has focused on the traffic of words, gestures, and symbols, but the material human body is a highly significant though underexplored element of this process. Goffman employs “face” as a metaphorical concept , suggesting “the person’s face clearly is something that is not lodged in or on his body, but rather something that is diffusely located in the flow of events in the encounter.”9 Yet face-work is a deeply embodied process enacted through facial expression and articulation too. Social interaction relies on the human face. Faces function as mechanisms for communication. Verbal language is delivered though the mouth; eyes, brows, and cheeks facilitate nonverbal communication. In addition, faces distinguish one person from another. Recognition is made possible largely by the human face, which we think of like a fingerprint— each might resemble another, but no two are exactly the same. It is the 26 > 27 are theoretical kin in three distinct ways too. Both the interactional dynamic (face-work) and the material, symbolic practice (facial work) rely upon technical collaboration, ritualistic practice, and restorative procedures. First, face-work/facial work is a collaborative process that involves multiple social actors who together are invested in the maintenance of face. Goffman suggests that social actors engage in face-work to create and maintain their respective faces. This is ongoing work and a necessary condition of interaction, without which a shared reality breaks down. Thus, everyone embedded in an interaction is invested in one another’s face. Social interaction is obviously a collective undertaking, but the surgical repair of the human face is a cooperative endeavor, too. Social actors (human and nonhuman) including surgeons, patients, popular films and network television, technologically generated images, bioethicists, plastic polymers, news media, flight patterns traversing the globe, antirejection medication, and cultural narratives about the face come together to infuse facial work with the particular meanings and significance that it carries. Thus, both literal and interactive facial work is accomplished in collaboration. Neither the surgeon with her technical skill nor the patient with his desire for a different appearance accomplishes facial work in isolation. Face-work and facial work only become what they are in the give and take among social actors. Second, face-work/facial work is an interaction ritual.12 Goffman conceptualizes the self as a sacred entity forged through social encounters that require ritualistic respect. The process of social interaction not only maintains social order, but also fortifies the collective consciousness.13 Facial work aimed toward repairing the human face is also a ritual of sorts. For symbolic interactionists, ritual refers to processes that solidify the social order. Repairing facial difference has direct effects on those who experience surgery, but because atypical faces often elicit social anxiety, aesthetic surgery has indirect effects on others. The intervention is two-pronged, then. Facial work not only normalizes facial variance but also facilitates social ease and, ultimately...