A qualitative study on aesthetic intervention to the body: Evaluations from Pierre Bourdieu's perspective

In modern life, the body becomes more individualized than ever, while the formation of identities through the body encourages the interchangeability of the body. While the formation of body image is determined by cultural dynamics, people shape their bodies through social acceptance. The body, which has been discussed from different angles in contemporary social theory since the end of the twentieth century, has had a special place in the sociology literature. Social theorists argue that the body is commercialized in the culture of consumption, feminists argue that social acceptances are imposed on the body, Foucaultian analysts argue that forms of power take place through the body, and readings of technological developments argue that the body has become uncertain. In this research, which was created from the body sociology literature, the relationship of the modern body with aesthetic surgical procedures has been assessed. Aesthetic surgery and non-surgical operations have been defined as cultural products. Aesthetic surgery and body interaction are privatized in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, which combines discussions of power and culture. Aesthetic procedures, which have become a part of daily life and seem to be normalized, contain multiple structural features and cultural dynamics. The first example of these dynamics are globalization, consumption, the domination of medicine on societies, gender, religious and ideological structure, media tools and celebrity influence. Pierre Bourdieu, who studied the social divisions formed over lifestyle, made sense of aesthetic operations through the concepts of habitus, distinction, taste, cultural body capital, social and symbolic capital, domination and symbolic power. Body aesthetic procedures, which are included in cultural consumption, are understood in the intersection of income status, occupational and educational status, gender, age and neighborhood structures. The formation of individual identities through consumption patterns has obscured social classes and stratifications. As boundaries become blurred, there are ruptures in the structural foundations of the lifestyle and consumption relationship. It has been understood that aesthetic procedures and preference situations, which are the mode of consumption, constitute a different structure from the lifestyle practices that constitute the divisions in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, which is approaching appreciation within the homology argument.