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at bodies," (says John Travolta, after training for the movie Staying
Alive) "almost like pieces of clay that can be molded."2 On the medical front, plastic surgery, whose repeated and purely cosmetic
employment has been legitimated by Michael Jackson, Cher and
others, has become a fabulously expanding industry, extending its
domain from nose jobs, face lifts, tummy tucks and breast augmentations to collagen-plumped lips and liposuction-shaped ankles,
calves and buttocks. In 1989, 681,000 procedures were done, up
80% over 1981; over half of these were performed on patients
between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five.3 The trendy Details
magazine describes "surgical stretching, tucking and sucking [as]
another fabulous [fashion] accessory," and invites readers to share
their cosmetic surgery experiences in their monthly column "Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (Fig. 2). In that column, the transportation of fat from one part of the body to another is described as
breezily as changing hats:
Dr. Brown is an artist. He doesn't just pull and tuck and forget about
you.... He did liposuction on my neck, did the nose job and
tightened up my forehead to give it a better line. Then he took some
fat from the side of my waist and injected it into my hands. It goes in
FIG. 3
