Why should social scientists and cultural scholars pay attention to aesthetic medical procedures? In this episode, Alka Menon (Yale University) and Anne-Mette Hermans (Tilburg University) take us beneath the surface of Botox, rhinoplasties, and Brazilian Butt Lifts to reveal what these increasingly normalised procedures can tell us about social inequality today.
With host Sanne Pieters, they explore how doctors and surgeons shape more than just faces. By deciding which appearances are acceptable, these practitioners navigate the boundaries between medicine and aesthetics, morality and beauty, economics and ethics, and in doing so play a key role in (re)defining racial categories and hierarchal beauty ideals. Our guests tackle some seemingly contradictory puzzles with no easy answers. Why do practitioners insist that “true beauty comes from within”? And how should we understand the normalisation of aesthetic procedures when those who undergo them still face persistent stigma?
This episode shows that cosmetic surgery is about much more than just appearance: it holds up a mirror to the social inequalities that exist in society.
Alka V. Menon is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She studies the relationship between medicine, technology, and society, with a focus on race and racism. Her book, Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards shows how forces working at different scales stabilize the continuing use of racial categories in medicine.
Anne-Mette Hermans is an Assistant Professor at Tranzo, Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on (consumerist) notions of malleable bodies and cosmetic procedures in particular. Moreover, she co-established the interdisciplinary Expertisegroep Cosmetische Ingrepen, which executes several research projects related to the cosmetic surgery and beauty industry in the Netherlands.
Sanne Pieters is a PhD Researcher of cultural sociology at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research interests include the relation between physical beauty and social inequalities, hegemonic and hybrid gender identities and bodywork as pedagogical practice.
Readings:
Hermans, A.-M. (2021). Discourses of perfection: Representing cosmetic procedures and beauty products in UK lifestyle magazines. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003001973
Hermans, A.-M., & Nash, R. (2025). Cosmetic gatekeepers: Negotiations of beauty and (re)shaping bodies by medical aesthetic practitioners. Social Science & Medicine, 380, 118165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118165
Menon, A. V. (2023). Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (1st ed). University of California Press.
Menon, A. V. (2017). Reconstructing race and gender in American cosmetic surgery. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(4), 597–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1206590
Bonell, S., Barlow, F. K., & Griffiths, S. (2021). The cosmetic surgery paradox: Toward a contemporary understanding of cosmetic surgery popularisation and attitudes. Body Image, 38, 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.04.010
Haraway, Donna (1990). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.
Podcast editors: Luuc Brans, Sanne Pieters, Kobe De Keere & Geert Veuskens. This podcast is co-financed from the BINQ project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant No. 101052649. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. This podcast is also kindly supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam.
All content for Culture & Inequality Podcast is the property of Culture & Inequality Podcast and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Why should social scientists and cultural scholars pay attention to aesthetic medical procedures? In this episode, Alka Menon (Yale University) and Anne-Mette Hermans (Tilburg University) take us beneath the surface of Botox, rhinoplasties, and Brazilian Butt Lifts to reveal what these increasingly normalised procedures can tell us about social inequality today.
With host Sanne Pieters, they explore how doctors and surgeons shape more than just faces. By deciding which appearances are acceptable, these practitioners navigate the boundaries between medicine and aesthetics, morality and beauty, economics and ethics, and in doing so play a key role in (re)defining racial categories and hierarchal beauty ideals. Our guests tackle some seemingly contradictory puzzles with no easy answers. Why do practitioners insist that “true beauty comes from within”? And how should we understand the normalisation of aesthetic procedures when those who undergo them still face persistent stigma?
This episode shows that cosmetic surgery is about much more than just appearance: it holds up a mirror to the social inequalities that exist in society.
Alka V. Menon is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She studies the relationship between medicine, technology, and society, with a focus on race and racism. Her book, Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards shows how forces working at different scales stabilize the continuing use of racial categories in medicine.
Anne-Mette Hermans is an Assistant Professor at Tranzo, Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on (consumerist) notions of malleable bodies and cosmetic procedures in particular. Moreover, she co-established the interdisciplinary Expertisegroep Cosmetische Ingrepen, which executes several research projects related to the cosmetic surgery and beauty industry in the Netherlands.
Sanne Pieters is a PhD Researcher of cultural sociology at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research interests include the relation between physical beauty and social inequalities, hegemonic and hybrid gender identities and bodywork as pedagogical practice.
Readings:
Hermans, A.-M. (2021). Discourses of perfection: Representing cosmetic procedures and beauty products in UK lifestyle magazines. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003001973
Hermans, A.-M., & Nash, R. (2025). Cosmetic gatekeepers: Negotiations of beauty and (re)shaping bodies by medical aesthetic practitioners. Social Science & Medicine, 380, 118165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118165
Menon, A. V. (2023). Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (1st ed). University of California Press.
Menon, A. V. (2017). Reconstructing race and gender in American cosmetic surgery. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(4), 597–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1206590
Bonell, S., Barlow, F. K., & Griffiths, S. (2021). The cosmetic surgery paradox: Toward a contemporary understanding of cosmetic surgery popularisation and attitudes. Body Image, 38, 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.04.010
Haraway, Donna (1990). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.
Podcast editors: Luuc Brans, Sanne Pieters, Kobe De Keere & Geert Veuskens. This podcast is co-financed from the BINQ project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant No. 101052649. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. This podcast is also kindly supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam.
Reprise: Culture, inequality, boundaries. Theoretical traditions and core texts
Culture & Inequality Podcast
1 hour 11 minutes 58 seconds
2 years ago
Reprise: Culture, inequality, boundaries. Theoretical traditions and core texts
***This is a rerecording, updated, and better version of our very first episode, which we originally recorded in 2020. We hope you will enjoy this new version! ***
In this first pilot episode, we discuss the core themes of the course: how do culture and inequality relate? This meeting will discuss why and how this has become such a central theme in sociology and other disciplines (notably cultural studies, anthropology), how this relation this been theorized in various theoretical traditions (notable Bourdieu's field theory, British cultural studies inspired by Stuart Hall , and American cultural sociology in the vein of Michele Lamont); and how has this been empirically analyzed? Moreover, we will offer a first exploration of the continued relevance of these insights on culture and inequality for contemporary societies, and for the everyday life of (young) people today.
--- This week's readings:
Bourdieu, P. (1994). Social space and symbolic space. In Calhoun, Craig et al. (eds.) Contemporary Sociologi-cal Theory, 345-358.
Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, 241-258. New York: Greenwood.
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Love, and Paul Willis (eds.), Culture, Media, Language, pp. 128–38. London: Hutchinson. Link: https://we.riseup.net/as-sets/102142/appadurai.pdf#page=202
Lamont, M. (1992). Implications, contributions and unanswered questions. In Money, Morals and Manners, 174-192. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuipers, G. (2006). Television and taste hierarchy: The case of Dutch television comedy. Media, Culture & Society 28(3): 359-378.
Additional materials
Video: Carle, Pierre (2002). La sociologie est un sport de combat. Pierre Bourdieu. Documentary.
https://vimeo.com/92709274
Video: Hall, Stuart (1997). Representation and media. Open University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGh64E_XiVM
Video: Lamont, Michele (2016). Doing sociology. American Sociological Association. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIR1mYsy510
Presentation: Giselinde Kuipers & Luuc Brans
Audio production edit: Luuc Brans
Theme music by Timothy Dowd
We are grateful for the generous support from European Centre for the Study of Culture and Inequality
Culture & Inequality Podcast
Why should social scientists and cultural scholars pay attention to aesthetic medical procedures? In this episode, Alka Menon (Yale University) and Anne-Mette Hermans (Tilburg University) take us beneath the surface of Botox, rhinoplasties, and Brazilian Butt Lifts to reveal what these increasingly normalised procedures can tell us about social inequality today.
With host Sanne Pieters, they explore how doctors and surgeons shape more than just faces. By deciding which appearances are acceptable, these practitioners navigate the boundaries between medicine and aesthetics, morality and beauty, economics and ethics, and in doing so play a key role in (re)defining racial categories and hierarchal beauty ideals. Our guests tackle some seemingly contradictory puzzles with no easy answers. Why do practitioners insist that “true beauty comes from within”? And how should we understand the normalisation of aesthetic procedures when those who undergo them still face persistent stigma?
This episode shows that cosmetic surgery is about much more than just appearance: it holds up a mirror to the social inequalities that exist in society.
Alka V. Menon is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She studies the relationship between medicine, technology, and society, with a focus on race and racism. Her book, Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards shows how forces working at different scales stabilize the continuing use of racial categories in medicine.
Anne-Mette Hermans is an Assistant Professor at Tranzo, Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on (consumerist) notions of malleable bodies and cosmetic procedures in particular. Moreover, she co-established the interdisciplinary Expertisegroep Cosmetische Ingrepen, which executes several research projects related to the cosmetic surgery and beauty industry in the Netherlands.
Sanne Pieters is a PhD Researcher of cultural sociology at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research interests include the relation between physical beauty and social inequalities, hegemonic and hybrid gender identities and bodywork as pedagogical practice.
Readings:
Hermans, A.-M. (2021). Discourses of perfection: Representing cosmetic procedures and beauty products in UK lifestyle magazines. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003001973
Hermans, A.-M., & Nash, R. (2025). Cosmetic gatekeepers: Negotiations of beauty and (re)shaping bodies by medical aesthetic practitioners. Social Science & Medicine, 380, 118165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118165
Menon, A. V. (2023). Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (1st ed). University of California Press.
Menon, A. V. (2017). Reconstructing race and gender in American cosmetic surgery. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(4), 597–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1206590
Bonell, S., Barlow, F. K., & Griffiths, S. (2021). The cosmetic surgery paradox: Toward a contemporary understanding of cosmetic surgery popularisation and attitudes. Body Image, 38, 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.04.010
Haraway, Donna (1990). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.
Podcast editors: Luuc Brans, Sanne Pieters, Kobe De Keere & Geert Veuskens. This podcast is co-financed from the BINQ project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant No. 101052649. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. This podcast is also kindly supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam.
