Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Aileen Zhou. Today, I'm so happy to be joined by Professor Lucia Soriano to discuss her new book, Embodying Normalcy, Women's Work in Neoliberal Times, published by Roman and Littlefield in late 2024.

This book calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid work, like constantly working on their appearance to keep up with the ever-changing trends and to succeed in a neoliberal culture that ties value to self-transformation. Okay, without further ado, let's get started. Hello, Lucia. Welcome to the show.

Hello, thank you for having me. Of course. So to start with, could you please introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners?

Certainly. So my name is Lucia and I am currently a assistant professor of ethnic studies and women's gender and sexuality studies at Albion College, which is a small private liberal arts college in central Michigan. And a little bit more about myself besides, you know, what I currently do. I grew up in Southern California. And so I think a lot of that, a lot of my interests actually in what I wrote about in this book

in a way stems from that because I added this sort of close proximity to, right. To, to celebrity in a sense, right. To sort of that touching of like Hollywood. And like, I, when I, when I was in my teens, I, I went to LA a lot and I went to tapings of shows a lot to like sort of be near celebrities, right. To have that sort of experience. So I,

I kind of, I look back at it now and I think a lot of what I like to think about now is kind of related to having grown up in Southern California. So I got to do that. And I think by way of that, I became curious about celebrities, you know, and then eventually sort of thinking about celebrity bodies, right? And this intersection with beauty and reality television too. So I think

a lot of, you know, what I think about now is actually about where I came from. So, and I grew up in the Inland Empire in a city called Montana, California, and that's about 45 an hour away from LA. So I did make sort of the intent, the trek to LA to kind of experience that celebrity culture when I was growing up. So yeah, that's a little bit about myself, where I grew up. Yeah.

That's so cool. So as you did your grad school or as you were working on this book, was there a particular moment or experience that really motivated you to continue this research?

I was, I think through my, especially through my master's program, I really became interested in cultural studies as a discipline, but also thinking a lot in how we produce ourselves, like in that production aspect and like that self-production aspect, which I think again, kind of comes up in this book. And so I don't know that I have a particular moment, but I was also always kind of wrestling with

with these topics anyways, right? Like I can, I think what makes my book or this particular research approachable to a lot of people is because a lot of people can relate to it. And so being able to talk about my research and very early on and people kind of, and being able to understand it on a personal level kind of pushed me

pushed me to continue to explore it. Even when at moments, I think I certainly felt whether it was real or not, but whether it felt like research or academics really thought that this type of research was valuable, right, or valid. And that sort of always tends to be the case when we talk about sort of these feminized spaces, right? When we talk about body politics or beauty politics,

it always sort of gets like a side eye from certain academics, whether it's like really actual valuable work. So, but I think very early on, I sort of felt that, but I continued with it because I could, I don't know, maybe I just felt really confident in that type of work. And especially when during my master's program, when I started to write about the Kardashians and like their reality television show, which was kind of in its early infancy at that time, like in 2012 and 2013, um,

And so, yeah, I think there's just little moments where I think when I was getting pushback from other academics and maybe grad graduate students alike, that maybe this work wasn't really real work that I wanted to keep doing it and to keep thinking about it. Yeah, I really like this book. And at different moments when I was reading, I felt related. We'll get to that more later when we talk about the chapters. But yeah.

In general, I feel this book is really an interdisciplinary work that you draw from like gender studies, women's studies, media studies, disability studies, and also critical race and ethnicity theories. So how did you manage to weave all these different films together? I think I was able to do that because of my job.

just my training as a whole, right from very early on. I got my BA in ethnic and women's studies and my master's was in cultural studies. And so I think once I got to my master's, I even saw more of that interdisciplinary work, even more seeing how scholars and thinkers were thinking about gender, race, class,

Um, the one, I think the one part that came unfortunately to me very late in my graduate training was disability studies. Um, because it just wasn't very, it wasn't very present in, in institutions. Right. Um, and so I didn't get really to interact with disability studies until I was doing my PhD actually. And, um, professor, uh, Dr. Jennifer Barkley, who's a historian, she taught

our disability studies seminar. And so that was the first time I really got to wrestle with disability studies as a, as a discipline and to really see how a lot of my interests and my questions that I was thinking about could kind of be, um, connected to the questions that disability studies were, was also kind of grappling with. So like, you know, I talk about

freak shows and sort of these differences, right? When bodies are not perceived as quote unquote normal, how culturally, right? Socially, politically, how they're shaped really comes out of disability studies. And so that's something that I wish I would have really gotten to know a lot sooner. But I think even so, I was able to use...

disability studies and, and, you know, gender studies and women's studies and media studies. And I see, I guess I see myself as a cultural studies scholar. So, but I, I guess I, I was able to really maneuver between all of these fields and, and put something together that I feel really proud of. And I do think is interdisciplinary in that sense.

I know you're teaching at a liberal arts college now. Have you tried to incorporate this kind of interdisciplinary approach to your teaching in any ways? Always, always really. And I'm lucky in that sense at teaching at a liberal arts college where it's pretty encouraged, right, to be interdisciplinary, especially when then

if you're in the humanities or social sciences. So because I hold this joint appointment in ethnic studies and women's gender sexuality studies, I just sort of organically am sort of always working interdisciplinary, interdisciplinarity within my classes. So it's kind of really cool to be able to do not only my research to be interdisciplinary, but also in my classes to always include different types of disciplines that

that look at these particular types of things like gender and race. And I'm wondering how students usually feel about that. Are they interested in this approach or this kind of materials?

I think they are, especially when I get to teach elective classes. So not just introductory classes, which I do do interdisciplinary in the intro classes. But when I teach classes, like I teach a class called Bodies in American Culture, which is very much mirrors what I did in this book in terms of research. And when I teach those type of classes, like I always get students who are like,

why aren't there more students in this class? You know, this is such an interesting topic and like, you know, things like maybe again, relatable, but like you don't often get to, you're not often really taught or get to wrestle with these things and other types of classes. So I think that's something I've been lucky to do. And that students, once they sort of are introduced to it, then they'll end up

you know, maybe they'll take more of my classes or something. They kind of, I think they end up enjoying that, the indisciplinarity of, of my classes and the style that I teach in with.

That's really, really good. So let's talk more about this book. So one of the core ideas you present in this book is normalcy. So could you help us unpack what you mean by that? And why is it so important for us to understand women's work and labor of embodying normalcy?

So when I started to think about this book project, which it was in my dissertation, a version of my dissertation, I was really trying to come up with a way to describe this whole thing that I was sort of thinking about. And it was really in conversation with my dissertation chair, Dr. Lisa Guerrero, that we sort of organically gravitated towards this.

talking about things like, you know, the makeup tutorials and how much, how much money we were spending, like buying the makeup, right. Buying the skincare products that we were both watching in these makeup tutorials. And, you know, how at some points it felt incredibly overwhelming at the same time to like do. And so the use of normalcy began from us thinking,

asking if this was normal. Is this normal for women to do? How normal is it for us to do this in our society? And so I started with using the work of being normal and then it eventually mostly transitioned to using embodying normalcy. And I kind of went with normalcy over normal because

it kind of offered more of an action oriented thing that I think normal is missing in the, as a term. So normal C is more like action oriented. It does, um, offer in this case, something that is to describe something that is constantly like reproduced, something that is constantly done or something that is constantly worked on. And so I kind of thought about normal C and using this sort of embodying normal C, um,

as something that's constantly working, something that's constantly happening. And that was kind of how I leaned into using embodying as well. So again, to me, embodying sort of signals, right? This constant change or this constant need to change. So that's kind of how I envisioned, right? Using embodying normalcy as like an action oriented thing that constantly needs to be worked on. Um,

Because, you know, as you know, like with the book Project, it was like one of the main things was like how we women in neoliberal culture constantly feel like the need to work on our bodies as if they are projects. So that's kind of how I came up or how I decided to use Normalcy for the book. And you focus particularly on the U.S. between 2000s to 2020s.

So why did you choose to focus on that particular period? I think it had to do a little bit with who I thought my audience might be in terms of a focus. I was thinking about potentially students who would maybe read my book, right? Maybe a chapter of it in the class or something like that. I was trying to think about how...

how I would want to explain, like, kind of like the trajectory, right, of, of embodying normalcy, like, how have things changed? And when, like, I was trying to think of a good period of time. And I mean, obviously, the things that I, the case studies, right, that cover, you know, things like makeup tutorials, or a little bit of talk about Ozempic in the epilogue, those are all more recent phenomenons, right? So I thought,

the early 2000s to early 2020s was going to feel a little bit more relevant or more palpable or more tangible, I think, for younger readers as well. And

And certainly the 2000s, the early 2000s was also useful to me because, as you know, the first chapter talks about reality television makeovers, which really kind of came into prominence in that early 2000s. And why I chose to sort of have chapter one be chapter one was because I was trying to create that timeline. OK, like we start from the beginning, which in this case was early 2000s.

So yeah, it was a little bit about a timeline, but also thinking about who my readers might be. I see. That's interesting. And another thing is, I feel like at different moments, like when you talk, when you write about the freak shows, or when you refer to women's magazines back in the 20th century, I feel like the idea of embodying normalcy is

Probably it's not a new thing that only came to us after 2000.

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say, you know, influencer does now, right, in terms of instructing women, what to buy, you know, when to buy how to wear it. So it's almost like the medium kind of changed, right? It became it wasn't just a magazine anymore. It was like, because of technology, and because of social media, the medium was now social media, and YouTube, right, or TikTok now a lot. And

And so that became just kind of the new version of that. And in particular with the freak shows, and that was something that was, that's something real, again, old 18th, 19th century phenomenon where particular bodies were displayed because they were different. People made profit, right? And they were sort of seen as amusement, but they were ultimately also used as,

as a way to say, these bodies are different. How do you become normal in comparison to this body? So kind of the mechanisms, right, were always about instructing women in particular about how to fit in, right, and how to be a better version of themselves. So yeah, certainly not new and

it was intentional to couple it with neoliberal culture or this sort of timeline. Again, people that are younger, right? Again, I was thinking about the audience might not know or might not, they probably experienced neoliberalism, right? Or neoliberal culture, but we just, you might not know. And so that was important to me to try to explain how neoliberal culture sort of exacerbates

these things like that we have now in comparison to like the, you know, the magazine or the freak show. And so that was also something that I was thinking about that I tried to explain, at least throughout the book in terms of how do I explain this to students in particular to younger audience who might not be super familiar with it.

Yeah, because sometimes I would feel it's so hard to write about some recent social phenomena or cultural materials because, you know, it's just it's not easy to keep a distance from what we're living through and still be critical. So I really appreciate that.

your effort in this book. So before we dive into the chapters, you mentioned chapter one is about the makeover reality TV shows. So what about the rest of the book? Can you give us like an overview of the book structure and tell us why you choose to organize this five case studies in this book?

Yes. So when I was even very early on, when I was thinking about my dissertation, that would eventually become this book. I was intentional with I knew that I did not want to write a long book and I knew that I did not want to write a long chapters. And this was just from like personal experience from like being in graduate school. Right. Academics like sometimes we like to go on and on for like 50 pages. And sometimes.

And certainly there are certain, you know, books that I'm sure call for, you know, the sort of the lengthy pages and the lengthy chapters. But I always kind of had the intention of trying to write something that was fairly short and to me accessible insofar as like, I'm hoping that people outside of academia might pick up my book and read it. And I've been trying to be intentional about

about that and so very early on it was like shorter you know relatively short chapter shorter book as a whole um and even like for example like a few months ago like my house was getting painted and you know someone put someone painting my house like saw my book and they're like oh is that is that what you do and I said yes like this is what I do I write about this or I research this and I gave them a copy of my book right and so like that to me is like part of like this

this intention of I want people outside of academia to have access to this type of work. So, so yeah. So in terms of like the organization, um, like you said, you know, that first chapter is sort of setting up the timeline of the early two thousands with, um, talking about TLCs make a reality shows and kind of sets the tone for like why transformation became so fascinating and important to us. Um,

Chapter two does connect then kind of moves from the professional being someone on a makeover show to like the professional being someone on the other side, like on the screen, someone on as a beauty influencer, becoming the professional to sort of teach us the, you know, what we need to do and how we need to look a particular way. And so that covers, you know, like early, like 2015, 2016 kind of era.

And then chapter three was really my sort of thought process about thinking about how embodying normalcy impacts women at like all stages of our lives. And which is why I went with like thinking about motherhood and connecting it to celebrity culture and celebrity moms in particular. And then so that's kind of like 20, 2018, 2020 era, I guess. And

And then more recently, the last chapter that I wrote for the book was covering Rizzling and Butt Lifts and just thinking about them as this new goal body. But also that was also coming out from looking and using TikTok hashtags as like my archive. And then finally looking at, I ended the book with an epilogue and not a conclusion to the

hopefully signal, right, that this kind of thinking process and work continues and there's really no hard conclusion or hard stop to it. But thinking about kind of reflecting on what the Ozambic era will, how that will shape this sort of work that we do.

Interesting. You mentioned your archive because it sounds like you're collecting this digital materials from social media and compile your own archive. Is that how it works?

I mean, I don't know if that's how it works and so forth, but like, that's what I did. You know, I, what I did was I thought about, you know, these particular places as my archives. And especially like when you look through, looking through like hashtags, there's so many different types of hashtags to look through. And so I, I try to, I guess, think about each hashtag as like me collecting archives and,

of like, you know, information that I can data that I could go and like, look through and try to find themes. So I kind of Yeah, especially when it comes to social media, I thought of like hashtags in particular as my archive. Wow, that's so cool. It sounds different from, you know, going to a library and digging into a file or a box. But in some ways, they are similar. Although the material is

The materials are different. The mediums are different. So let's talk more about the chapters. So first, the first chapter is about the makeover reality TV shows. So what's so special about that particular genre? Like why people love it so much?

I love reflecting back on this time because, you know, as I said, it's not only it was partially due to like to thinking about who my audience might be to set them up and give them, you know, some information about the time period, especially if students were not around. Right. And thinking about like future students to our current students, like they might know they might have been babies. Right. And so.

I was trying to set the stage and like setting the scene for them about about transformations. And so why were people really fascinated? I think it was because early, especially, you know, like the shows that I mentioned, like The Swan, it was like this really fascinating thing to think about it. Like there was no streaming services like you had very limited access.

options for like what to watch on television at this time and you really had to watch it only on tv like you weren't watching it on your phone or your laptop it was like so you're you were limited with what you could watch and I think I don't know maybe that helped it too but like when

when these shows, when these reality shows came on in like early 2000s, it was like, okay, well, I don't have anything else to watch. And it's like a Wednesday night, you know, and this is what's on television right now. And so I think it definitely had that on its side was that like, there just wasn't other options really to watch. So I think then people became fascinated with like this

this like window that we could have, like this almost like one-sided window of like, we can watch other people on television and they weren't celebrities, right? Like they were just like everyday people like us. And so I think that was part of the fascination is that we could watch other people on television. And then you just add in this idea of like a transformation, right? It was very dramatic, you know, the way that

they would bring, especially in thinking again, the Swan show was like, they would bring in these women who were like supposed to be these like ugly ducklings. And then they gave them, they went on for like months, right? We only got like an hour episode, but like, it was like several months of them getting like their faces based cosmetic surgery. They were getting their teeth fixed. If they needed to get their teeth fixed, they were losing weight. If they needed, you know, perceived to be needed to lose, to losing weight. And so they,

I think that, that there were just that fascination that that was why people became so interested in shows like this because of that spectacle aspect to it that we were like, wow, like look how much better they look. And like, you know, it was, it was, it was very much like situated as like, here's this expert doctor or surgeon or whatever, who's going to like walk this person through a total transformation. And,

and they're going to live so much more better after they do this. You know, like that was like, that was a story that we were told. And so I think that's, that is why we were, we, as in like just any sort of really spectator. I don't think, I think at some point maybe it started to be like more disproportionately women, but I think we were all, whatever your gender was, we were all super interested in like this idea of this makeover and this super epic transformation. Um,

Um, so much so that, you know, it wasn't just, it became not just about bodies, but then there was like this explosion of shows where people got their homes remodeled right on television or like they got, I don't know, their cars remodeled. It just became like everything could be remodeled. And we like, we loved that idea. And so I think, I don't know, all of those things, I think that's why people kind of gravitated towards watching it.

Yeah, I remember in your book, I think it's on page 23, you write that it really shows how transformation is at the heart of embodying normalcy. And in order for marginalized women to have a place in the United States, constant reinvention is a must. It's like not only their bodies, but also their living spaces, domestic spaces.

That's really cool. Then let's move on to chapter two. That's the one, the chapter about female beauty influencers and the chapter I especially related to because, you know, it's just so close to our life. I watch a lot of makeup channels.

tutorial videos, and I would definitely search on social media whenever I want to get any makeup or skincare products. So I'd like to hear more from you on the role that influencers or the general influencer economy play in shaping how ordinary women like us see ourselves or spend our money. Yeah, I think that's such a great question, because it

I think I see this chapter as just really scratching a very small surface of what that answer could be for your question in terms of what type of role they play. And for the purpose of the chapter and for the book, I was really curious about... I definitely saw and I see influencers, and in particular beauty influencers, as...

really playing into and kind of coming out of this moment of neoliberal culture in a sense of like, beauty influencers have to be flexible in like, constantly changing themselves so that they can continue to sell the products, right? Or the lifestyle, the narratives. And so I see this sort of working, see them working hand in hand with like that influencer economy because they're

you know, in order for it to continue, right. To continue to flourish the women, primarily women who, who do this type of work, who do the influencing work, they do have to constantly change themselves too. So I started to see them, you know, influencers, even the ones, you know, that I watched as like these sort of models, right. As these models of like what embodying normalcy looks like now,

now that we don't really need the professional and the makeover. Now we can just do these makeovers in our bedroom to ourselves after we watch, you know, these experts on our screens. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't know that I have like this big, bright answer for you, but I think the role is that, you know, especially now that I think about all the partnerships and the collaborations that influencers are doing with clients

with corporations, right. With makeup companies or wherever, like that's definitely going to add to the, I think the partnerships add to like their, their kind of expertise, like situating them as an, as an expert, but also it adds to seeing them as these sort of people we should look up to in a sense. And like, I don't know, I kind of see it as like this big sort of cycle of like, we watch these, these influencers and then we buy what they're,

telling us or what they might show us what they how we can look like them and then it just sort of continues on and like one of the things that I found interesting and trying to think about the influencers themselves was how you know being marketable or marketing ourselves became like a really big thing like it kind of I think again worked in hand in hand with the sort of kneelable principles of like

like this sort of individualism right or like self-made miss of of influencers was really activating to women like the fact that like okay women we still don't have like you know equal pay right we're still sort of on the general sort of job spectrum like not earning as much but I think what makes influencers so alluring is that they appear to be self-made right or they they appear to have it all together and like that they're making a lot of money on like

just being themselves. And so I found it really interesting, like their use of marketing themselves as desirable. And I think that that kind of overflowed a little bit to like ordinary women where I think I mentioned in this chapter about how we sort of take up talking about ourselves in like very market terms. So like we have

apply language that we would to like the economy but like to ourselves right to like investing in ourselves like using things like that and like that to me I see sort of as a I don't know working hand in hand with like influencers and like neoliberal culture and like this rise of like modeling ourselves after influencers to a certain extent.

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So is that only for women or it has a broader application?

Yeah, I mean, I think the application can certainly be revised and be used by other people. I mean, I think that especially when I think about the language of the economy and applying it to ourselves and using market words for us to describe ourselves, I think it might go beyond just women. While at the same time, I do think that women are the ones that are the most sort of disadvantaged in this sense, right? That like,

Like I said, if because we're still living in a world where women and women of all races and genders are sorry, and ethnicities are still making less money than say like their white male counterpart. Like, I think the stakes are slightly higher, right, for women and why it feels more urgent. I think for women to apply and present themselves as marketable because we still have a lot

to go right with with pairing up and with being equal to or being having more of an equity minded you know a society and so i think sure yes i think it could be applied to other people but i think there might just be more a little bit more at stake for women um in this sense yeah that's true um so later on in chapter three you move on to a different different kinds of

celebrity so you talk about mom influencers particularly celebrity moms so what kind of image do they present on social media can you share with us a couple of examples that stood out to you

Yeah. So in that chapter, when I was thinking about who are examples of this normative motherhood and like in the chapter, I explain normative motherhood as sort of being these like distinctive qualities that should be accomplished by all mothers. But I thought that celebrity moms in particular are kind of like really good examples of this, of like moms who should

be pursuing being entrepreneurs, for example, or like they should be like self-sufficient and they should be like physically fit. And like, it was kind of like this new version of a mom. And so I called it, you know, normative motherhood or like ways of practicing this type of motherhood. And so I was thinking about celebrities in particular. And again, following this sort of like self-made thing that we're like all really fascinated about, like American dreams and like women's

making it and like I saw it really like really parallel to celebrity culture and how like celebrity culture and American dreams sort of go hand in hand insofar as like whatever that success might mean or might look like is often tied to celebrities and so like this is how I sort of thought about you know who do I look at not just ordinary women but thinking about celebrities so I at the time I think I think so maybe

maybe still now, but I thought the good examples of, of women or mothers who fit this sort of entrepreneurial figure might be, you know, Kim Kardashian and like Gwyneth Paltrow. I talk about Chrissy Teigen and Jessica Alba and like all of these women were already really famous before they became mothers. And so I found her really interesting that like they used women,

they try to use like their motherhoodness to like advance their career in a sense. And, and I see this sort of, again, parallel with like ordinary moms who are like gravitating more and more towards having to find some sort of side hustle to, to be, to be a part of that, like that new sort of type of motherhood that we have now, like these celebrities. And so in terms of examples, I,

Those are sort of the broad sort of stroke examples in terms of celebrities. And I think one of the more appealing ones was the example of Chrissy Teigen, who, you know, she's married to John Legend and she has two or three kids with him now. And one of the things that I found really interesting about him, her rather, is that she kind of positions herself or her motherhood as like,

being wrapped in being a cook, right? She has her cookbooks and she was also at some point like the head of like the creative art department

Sorry, the creative director for Pampers for some of their collaborations. And then she was also like the collaborating with makeup companies. So I found her really interesting in terms of like she was really trying to like do it all, which is like what would fascinated me about this type of motherhood was that like this type of motherhood requires violence.

women to like do everything and be like successful at everything. And one of them is being a business woman. And so she really, to me, kind of checked off like she, you know, did the embodiment thing or the embodiment thing. She was a model, Chrissy Teigen, right? She does the makeup. She does the cooking. And she was also very intentional about like

the, you know, underscoring the fact that like she eats right. Even though she's a model. So it's like, it was very interesting to see her as an example of like, okay, this is like an example of like the type of normative motherhood that we see now, or like that women should aspire to be. And yeah, she kind of like was playing wearing all these hats. And so I found her as a really interesting example of, of a normative motherhood figure. Then I,

I feel like a lot of pressure falls onto ordinary women to catch up with

this trend or to really embody the normative motherhood. Like it demands a lot of work, labor, especially for marginalized women. Yeah, certainly. And especially thinking about like the self-sufficiency and like the physical fitness aspect, I think in particular, which is like why I, in the cover of the book, I really wanted to show

a mom working out, which is like the bottom, the bottom foot of the road. Like that, that was really important to me to have some sort of image where, yeah, to just sort of underscore like the expectations of like how to embody normalcy in this type of motherhood is like by making sure like you're physically fit and like working out with your kid and then like showing off on social media that like you're working out. And it was just like, it's not so far as like, I don't think motherhood

mothers or women should do this right but it was like it very much felt like um expectation to like film yourself working out to show like that you were taking off the box of doing it um and so that's why it was important to me to yeah have that image of the mom working out and um yeah and the other i

actually I didn't pay much attention but as you just brought up I was looking at the cover so there are other two images one is the ozempic injection and the other one I believe is the Brazilian butt lift surgery yeah I mean I think that's definitely it could be one of them is that again imagery was really important to me to like show what am I talk about in the book and yeah the the

I think the top right one, like you said, it is, it's something like Ozempic. And the, that, yeah, that left bottom left image is certainly either some type of augmentation for sure. Right. I am not sure if that's in particular the Brazilian butler, but that was definitely something I was going for was just trying to say, you know, thinking about all the different ways that we sort of mark up our bodies and try to change our bodies.

So why women nowadays are so obsessed with modifying our bodies and are even willing to risk our health or even lives? Yeah, that was actually one of my favorite, maybe my favorite chapter to write because it felt, again, for me, really palpable in the sense of I was seeing all these, like

And I sort of stumbled my way into thinking about the Brazilian butt lift. But I don't, again, it was a question, I think, like you posed it, I think it was a question I was trying to explore in that last chapter about, you know, why would we want to put, why would we women want to put our lives at risk? And, you know, I don't know that I have like a firm conclusion, right, as to like why, but it definitely feels like there's a lot of,

different things that are pulling at us like in different directions to be a lot and I think that's why it follows like the normative motherhood one because it's really about like this constant transformation and it seems like we've gotten to the point where the transformations need to be bigger and like better and like more spectacle right comparison to like how it started in

the first chapter, it was just like, the makeovers could have been like, you know, changing your style, changing your clothes, like you didn't have to modify your body. Certainly in the swamp, maybe they did. But like, it started off something really small, right? And something in a way familiar, like with the magazines, like learning how to dress a particular way or like what to eat. But now with like an ending like this chapter in the book and in the BBL and like,

this sort of big cosmetic surgery, it seems like the fixes of how we shape our body are becoming more magnified or more like bigger. And I mean, I don't know. It feels like they are becoming more dangerous in a way because talk a little bit about how there's this sense of urgency. Like there's less time because of late capitalism or we feel like there's less time because of our jobs and our lifestyle, right?

And so I think, I don't know if this answers like the why women choose, but I think that this is a really interesting case as to like why women, especially working class women, why they might be gravitating towards putting their life on the line and spending their hard earned money to do something like this in order to feel like

they fit in, right? Essentially what it comes down to and how they feel accepted into society. And so it was really interesting to explore that question and using those archives or those hashtags that I found. And yeah, I really just enjoyed exploring the possibilities in or why this became such a popular thing. And I think really continues to be, even today, right? Really continues to be a popular thing

cosmetic surgery for women to get. Yeah, so we've got this much pressure or expectation, be it self-expectation or social expectation. Do you see any potential or places that ordinary women can push back or be subversive against these social norms, either within or outside the U.S.? Mm-hmm.

I do think, I mean, something I think I've struggled with is making sure that I don't make it seem like women don't have any sense of agency, right? Like there is agency in all of this. But I think I was thinking about all the types of pressures that we might encounter. And so I think there's certainly room for resistance. And I think that women, especially women,

not just like cisgender or heteronormative women, but also people that might not be binary, right? I think there's definitely pushback to and resistance to these type of requirements in embodying a particular type of normalcy. I just think that they get, unfortunately, drowned out, right? These other things are sort of louder than the resistance at this point. But I do think there are possibilities

of resistance within communities and even online who are saying, you know, no or completely rejecting it or definitely speaking out about it. It would be interesting to, you know, explore those maybe in a future, right, future art

article or a book or something like that. And perhaps there are other people who are already talking about it. But yeah, I do think that, you know, I definitely want to say we women, we do have agency. But that we live in a moment where we are being kind of pulled in different directions. And I'm hopeful that that resistance will grow louder. Yeah, definitely. And the power dynamic is really interesting.

So as we're coming to the end of this interview, I want to say that publishing the first monograph, it's such a huge milestone for academics. So congratulations first. And I'm wondering if you have any tips or reflections you'd like to share with our listeners, because I know many are interested.

grad students or early career scholars who are navigating or trying to find their path in academia? Do you have anything to share with them? Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the congratulations. I think that's, well, that's a

Great big question. I would say that in terms of like thinking about publishing, yeah, definitely if you can, if they're able to meet with editors, you know, just like reaching out to editors just to simply send an introduction email, if that's what they want to do in terms of publishing a book. That's certainly something that I would encourage people, even though it feels really scary, I think, to put yourself out there like that. But

you know, you won't know what the answer is unless you do it, right? So, you know, just encouraging people to put their work out there and just shoot an email, especially if you're going to conference or something like that. That's how I kind of ended up with my book here is the editor reached out to me when I gave a conference presentation. And so that just, that's how it became very like,

Hi, like, I like your work. And they're like, are you going to publish? And I was like, yeah, eventually. And so it was kind of about keeping that relationship going and kind of keeping them in communication about where I was career wise. Because I because I wanted to make sure I was

you know, kind of more stable career wise to get the book out before I, you know, started, started working on it more kind of closely. So yeah, I would say, you know, make connections and shoot emails out to editors if you're looking for a book or I imagine just for an article as well. And yeah, just just kind of keep working at it, I guess like it, I can't really think of anything else in terms of like, I wish there was like a really easy way to just be like,

you know, but I think that I think there's, I think academic, you know, academia is just its own world. But yeah, if I could just set some, you know, just kind of keep going, keep doing your thing, even when you think people might not, you know, like I, you know, like I mentioned earlier on, I thought at some point people, you know, couldn't take my work seriously. And so, yeah, just keep doing it, even if you think other people don't see it be worthwhile. Definitely. Like there's no shortcut. Yeah.

So before I let you go, may I ask what are you currently working on or do you have any upcoming projects you would like to share with our audience? I am actually taking a bit of a break

bit of a break from, which again, I'm kind of going against the grain of academia because academia always wants you to keep working. Right. But, and keep writing, but yeah, I'm, you know, this, I worked on, on the revisions and working on this book the last couple of years. And so a year ago I was finishing it up and kind of turning it in. And I, you know, so I think right now what I'm doing is I'm sort of sitting in it. Like I, you know, I'm kind of taking a breather, a moment to just be like, I'm,

proud of this book and um I think one thing I would like to explore for a future you know research piece whether it's an article or just um I don't know if it would be a book but I was really drawn to cosmetic surgery and just like learning more about like I would imagine like there's more to it right than like the cosmetic surgery in terms of when I was writing the BBL chapter and like

there has to be a whole history to it. So maybe someone has already kind of written to it about it, but like I just became more drawn into maybe learning more about cosmetic surgery. And again, in the US or just like globally as to like how it came to be and maybe writing more deeply into the sort of the fascination that we have with modifying our bodies in that particular way. That sounds so interesting. I would love to read that if you ever publish it.

Great. Thank you so much for your time and for such a rich conversation today. Thank you so much. Thanks for the invitation.