quote · Legacy record
Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice.
Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice.
Approximate author period: c. 1962 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Naomi Wolf
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
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- Approximate author period: c. 1962 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1962; activity date not established; Wikidata Q237875, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q237875 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 90482; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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