[Ideals of beauty and the medical manipulation of the body between free choice and coercion].
OBJECTIVE
There is an increasing demand for invasive forms of cosmetic surgery. In view of the omnipresent confrontation with some idealized standards of beauty in advertising, films, beauty-shows etc., this paper deals with the question of whether women undergo cosmetic surgery because they are forced by a norm-setting beauty system or whether they choose these operations themselves.


OBJECTIVE
I offer an analysis of what could be an adequate concept of autonomous choice in this area. Particularly, it will be shown that a libertarian concept of autonomy is inadequate for analyzing the moral status of cosmetic surgery.


CONCLUSIONS
A concept of autonomy is outlined that enables us to qualify certain kinds of pressure as autonomy restricting.
Herrmann
Beate
B
Interfakultares Zentrum fur Ethik in den Wissenschaften (IZEW), Universitat Tubingen, Wilhelmstrabe 19, 72074 Tubingen, Germany. beate.herrmann@uni-tuebingen.de
D001504:Beauty; D001828:Body Image; D003068:Coercion; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D013518:Surgery, Plastic / Q000941:ethics*; D014930:Women