Becoming the Botox Consumer: Narratives of Body Entrepreneurship, Agency, and Choice

• In Event: 195 - Section on Body and Embodiment Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Intersectional Accounts of the Body

Abstract

As Botox becomes more normalized and easily available to a broader range of consumers, it is critical that we understand why these consumers choose to use Botox and what influences their decision-making processes. In this paper I explore how a sample of relatively young white women and some men make sense of their always already aging bodies in a world that denigrates old age. I argue that these specific women and men began using Botox because their economic, social, and cultural capital along with their geo-social location uniquely positioned them in a environment that gave them access to information about Botox and to the social support of a community that encourages this type of investment in body capital. I argue that my participants are body entrepreneurs who strategically cultivate their body capital in order to bolster their economic, social, and cultural capital. I examine my participants’ personal accounts of Botox within the epistemological context of neoliberalism in which these stories are embedded. The narratives in this chapter revealed how although an individual’s decision to use Botox is indeed a very personal one, the choices we make about our bodies and how we interpret these choices is intimately tied to our existing economic, social, and body capital, our social networks, and our available cultural repertoires.

Author

• Dana A. Berkowitz, Louisiana State University