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Ethnic plastic surgery, orethnic modification, refers to the types ofplastic surgery performed frequently due to certain racial or ethnic traits, or with the intention of making one's appearance more similar or less similar to people of a particularrace orethnicity.[1] Popular procedures which may have an ethnically motivated component arerhinoplasties (nose jobs) andblepharoplasties (double eyelid surgeries).[2]
Michael Jackson'splastic surgery has been discussed in the context of ethnic plastic surgery.[3] In her book,Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery, Elizabeth Haiken devotes a chapter to "The Michael Jackson Factor" presenting "Black,Asian, andJewish women who seekWASP noses andPlayboy breasts. They are caught in the vexed immigrants' dilemma of struggling not only tokeep up with the Joneses but to look like them, too."[4]
Plastic surgeons Chuma J. Chike-Obi, M.D., Kofi Boahene, M.D., and Anthony E. Brissett, M.D., F.A.C.S. distinguish between motivations of aesthetics and racial transformation for patients of African descent seeking plastic surgery. In their opinion, "Patients whose desired surgical outcomes result in racial transformation should be educated about the potential risks of this objective, and these requests should generally be discouraged."[5]
Feminist scholars have split views on the subject.Christine Overall, professor of philosophy atQueen's University at Kingston, has written that personal racial transformation, or as she puts it "transracialism", belongs to a larger class of personal surgical interventions. This larger class includestranssexual identity change,body art,cosmetic surgery,Munchhausen syndrome, andlabiaplasty. Her basic thesis is that the arguments against the ethical nature of racial transformation (e.g. "it's not possible", "betrayal of group identity", "reinforces oppression", etc.) stand or fall with the ethical arguments related to transsexual change.[6]Cressida Heyes, professor of Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality at theUniversity of Alberta, disagrees with Overall's schema. Heyes feels that racial transformation is fundamentally different from gender transformation since race is also determined by ancestry, personal cultural history and societal definitions. Hence ethical considerations of transracial surgery are different from ethical considerations in transsexual surgery.[7]
In theSouth Park episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" Kyle undergoes an ethnic plastic surgery called "negroplasty" to qualify for the basketball team.
In the 2008 movieTropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus goes through a controversial surgery to make his skin darker to play an African-American soldier.
