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Kylie Jenner’s breast augmentation and the politics of choice feminism

Where do we draw the line when it comes to normalising plastic surgery?

I’ll be the first to admit that – when it comes to discussions of beauty treatments, tweakments, and under-the-knife surgery – I’m usually one to jump on the empowerment soap box.

‘You do you!’, ‘It’s your body’, ‘who cares what other people think?’. I’ve thrown these lines out on more than one occasion – whether it’s coaching a friend through their decision to have work done, or unpacking the latest celebrity transformation.

As someone who’s obsessed over – and forcibly changed – their face since turning 18, perhaps this blindly emphatic support of the beauty industry comes from a place of insecurity. But regardless, I tend to stand by it. We’ve come a long way in the past decade, and women are (for the most part) not as vilified for engaging in an industry that exists solely to encourage said engagement.

If anything we’ve gone in the opposite direction. Plastic surgery is so pervasive online that you’d be forgiven for thinking everyone was having work done. Far from the taboo it used to be, indulging in the vanity of physical adjustments is now seen as empowering. When we go under the knife or syringe, we’re ostensibly taking ownership of our own bodies and agency. Some might even categorise these invasive beauty treatments as self-care.

But as Ione Gamble and Gina Tonic discuss on the Polyester Podcast, out of the 68 million people living in the UK, 27,000 have had cosmetic surgery. That’s a very slim portion of the population. And considering how much is marketed around this industry nowadays, it’s somewhat confusing.

As with most things, the internet is largely to blame for this large-scale normalisation of plastic surgery. But last week we entered a new phase of the beauty industry’s convoluted life-cycle. After an influencer begged the reality star to share details of her breast augmentation, Kylie Jenner delivered.

A candid comment beneath the video stated the exact size of her implants, where they were inserted, and even listed the name of the surgeon who performed the procedure.

‘Everyone say ‘thank you Kylie”, was the following consensus. Across the web, she was being dubbed a ‘girls’ girl’. It was immediately clear how far we’ve gone in normalising major cosmetic surgery – now, sharing the exact steps taken to achieve an altered look is praised. We are not necessarily encouraging others to follow suit, but we’re giving them the tools to do so.

Kylie Jenner has been criticised in the past for denying cosmetic procedures – including a breast augmentation. The beauty mogul has arguably made her fortune off the back of her full pout, which she marketed as the result of Kylie Cosmetics lip kits (not the copious amounts of lip filler she received).

The sudden pivot in her stance towards cosmetic transparency is being praised as a welcome shift in the celebrity culture – which is arguable to blame for the rise of demand for plastic surgery and our ever-growing disillusion with our own appearance.

But as Laura Pitcher asks for Dazed, can the right to beauty ever actually be democratised?

‘Does plastic surgery transparency level a playing field or generate even more pressure to adhere to today’s impossible cosmetic standards?’ Pitcher wonders.

‘It’s important to discuss the right people have to beauty globally in the context of the white supremacist Western beauty standard’. To this end, the supposed democratisation of the beauty industry is confounding because in reality beauty standards are always set by and for the elite. Thus, they subsequently reinforce white Western aesthetic norms – whether intentional or not.


‘Nothing is innately beautiful; we have to say what’s beautiful and beauty capitalism in and of itself is a racialised project,’ says Laurie Essig, professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Middlebury College.

Kylie Jenner’s honesty about her procedures may be a welcome breath of fresh air for some, but it sits sorely with others who’ve seen the billionaire prey on – and monetise – the insecurities of countless young women. Others see this sudden desire to be ‘relatable’ and ‘real’ a form of ‘choice feminism’.

‘Choice feminism is successful because a lot of women don’t want to believe that they are actually othered or subjugated in a million ways, big and small – that the world is actually like that,’ wrote one X user following Jenner’s comment went viral.

The term ‘choice feminism’ was first coined by Laura Hirshman in her 2006 book Get to work: a Manifesto for Women of the World, and is a critical phrase for expressions of feminism that emphasise women’s freedom of choice. Such expressions ‘seek to be non-judgemental and to reach as many allies as possible, which is considered depoliticisation by its critics.’

It’s this desire to be widely accepted that cultivates a fear of politics – and thus a paradoxical fear of feminism. But at the same time, are we to demonise a young woman like Kylie Jenner for delivering on something that has been publicly asked of her for so long?

We arrive back in a position where women can’t win. Where our actions are endlessly scrutinised and criticised and plucked apart – all the more so when it comes to the subject of our appearance.

And so it stands that the beauty industry will always win out against the individuals who serve it – at least as long as we continue to prioritise it above all else.

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