Scalpel Slaves and Surgical Sculptors: Cosmetic surgery, management of the media and the implications of commercialized medicine

Of the over 17 million surgical and minimally-invasive cosmetic procedures performed in the United States in 2016, women accounted for over 90% of patients and nearly 70% of all patients were white. The goal of cosmetic surgery is to surgically restructure a healthy body part to more closely represent the contemporary ideal of what defines a particular gender.