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Beauty and Breast Implantation: How Candidate Selection Affects Autonomy and Informed Consent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Lisa S. Parker
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Abstract

Candidate evaluation for breast implantation presents a more important obstacle to the fulfillment of the normative requirements of informed consent than do the social roles of women or cultural norms governing female beauty. I argue that women's decisions to receive breast implants may indeed be informed, competently made, and substantially voluntary, but that the cultural construction of beauty may undermine women's autonomy by influencing the evaluation of surgical candidates and risk disclosure during informed consent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 10 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminist Ethics and Social Policy, Part 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 183 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by Hypatia, Inc.

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