The beauty of one’s child. Aesthetic cultures in pediatric maxillofacial surgery consultations (2024)

Abstract:

Based on a year’s ethnographic fieldwork in the maxillofacial surgery department of a Paris pediatric hospital, this article analyses the aesthetic issues involved in facial operations on children. Observation of the consultations reveals substantial differences in the somatic and aesthetic cultures of the parents surveyed. Parents’ attitudes to cosmetic operations depend not only on their perception of cosmetic surgery, but also on their conception of childhood, which determines the legitimacy of an operation on their child’s body. Some parents feel that operations should be avoided as far as possible, while others see them as opportunities for their child, to protect them from the stigma attached to a deviant body. Whatever the attitude of parents towards cosmetic surgery for their child, they see their child’s body as a ‘capital asset’ in which to invest for their future. However, the ways in which they invest in this ‘physical capital’ depend on the complex arrangement of class and gender characteristics, of both the child and the parent in question.

Full text:

Shirine Abdoul Carime, « La beauté de son enfant. Les cultures esthétiques dans les consultations en chirurgie maxillo-faciale pédiatrique », Émulations [En ligne], 48 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 avril 2025, consulté le 09 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/emulations/3082 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13qop