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E-book Ovid on Cosmetics : Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts
It is fascinating to hypothesize Ovid’s views on the cosmeceutical and cosmetic industry in the modern west. Equally intriguing would be his opinion on elective cosmetic surgery. Both industries, driven by increasingly high consumer demand, have yearly profi ts in the billions of pounds as women, and increasingly men, seek to improve, preserve and even alter their appearance. Each year millions of women undergo procedures such as Botox injections, chemical peels, liposuctions, breast augmentations or reductions, laser hair removal, even calf augmentation and vaginal rejuvenation surgery. Research has estimated that cosmetic surgery in the United States will increase from approximately 1,688,694 patients in 2012, to 3,847,929 in 2030 with more and more men contributing to this projected fi gure (Broer, Levine and Juran 2014). Th e strangeness inherent in an ancient Roman’s hypothetical encounter with modern beautifi cation, as fanciful as the thought may be, underlines the implicit wonderment and anxiety- inducing responses that characterize the phenomenon. Transforming women into goddesses and men into gods through artifi cial means would surely have struck people from antiquity as somewhat miraculous in terms of surgical virtuosity but also perhaps as an ill- omened procedure that unwisely erased the physical demarcations between divinity and mortal. Th is is not to suggest, however, that the Romans were unfamiliar with plastic surgery. Celsus (7.8) records otoplasty to repair damage to the ears caused by heavy earrings (cf. Barini 1958: 43), procedures to repair parts of the body from the nose (Celsus: 7.10) to the mouth (7.12), and surgery to restore the prepuce (posthioplasty) for an aesthetically pleasing appendage (cf. Hodges 2001).
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