Representaciones e imaginarios corporales en los discursos alrededor de los procedimientos estéticos en la población femenina colombiana, una mirada desde los años 2000

Abstract

The limited information available to the public about the physical, mental and psychological implications of cosmetic surgeries, as well as the real figures of complications and deaths before, during and after the different procedures offered by the market present a challenge of dissemination and understanding not only in terms of public health, but also in terms of education on self-care, the construction of self-image, human development and the relationship of the body or body shape with the social environment. This requires a joint effort both from the market that performs and promotes this type of procedures and from the governmental entities that inspect, monitor and control them, in order to make visible all the data, statistics and testimonies that represent the reality behind the fashion or the trend of consumption around this type of procedures. As a contribution to this field, it is evident the need to undertake studies that not only aim at systematizing data or promoting information, but that approach an innovative perspective and linked to a view of human development and integral wellbeing, in order to encourage the recognition and promotion of information and real data that in terms of wellbeing achieve positive physical and mental results to improve the quality of patients' education, their informed decision making when performing plastic surgery procedures and that can generate a change in the perception of guilt, secrecy, or that generate other types of perceptions in front of this type of decisions, restructuring the relationship of aesthetic surgeries with society. In this sense, the research initially contributes to the presentation of different voices that gather both the practices and the conceptions associated with the different actors involved in the process of cosmetic surgeries, and this allows analyzing both the impact on mental health and the sociocultural and symbolic factors that intervene and that reveal, in many cases, features of symbolic violence.