Ann H. Beuf - Beauty Is the Beast: Appearance Impaired Children in America
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Beauty Is the Beast: Appearance Impaired Children in America
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Examines the stigmatism of children who deviate from acceptable American standards for physical appearance. Beuf analyzes both the effects of this stigmatization on children and the strategies used to cope with it.
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Copyright 1990 by the University of Pennsylvania Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beuf, Ann H., 1938 Beauty is the beast: appearance-impaired children in America / Ann Hill Beuf. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0812282345. ISBN 0812213106 (pbk.) 1. Disfigured childrenUnited StatesSociological aspects. 2. Stigma (Social psychology) I. Title. HV904.B48 1990 155.9'16dc20 8921485 CIP
Second paperback printing 1998
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Page v
To my family HONEY, CARLO, PETER, MAITLAND, MELINDA, CATHY, and MAX
Page vii
Contents
Acknowledgment
ix
1 Introduction
1
2 Perspectives: Stigmatization, Objectification, and Self
5
3 The Cultural Backdrop
27
4 "Funny Looking Kids": Social Stigmatization and Objectification of Appearance-Impaired Children
47
5 Coping with Impaired Appearance
63
6 Epilogue: Doing Something
107
Appendix: Caring Organizations
117
Notes
119
Bibliography
127
Index
133
Page ix
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of observations made during almost twenty years of sociological research. These observations have been of children with impaired appearance: burns, birth defects, dermatological disorders, weight problems, and eye problems.
The dermatology studies, carried out with my colleague, Professor Judith Porter of Bryn Mawr College, focused specifically on the impact of changed appearance on the social and psychological lives of vitiligo victims. Much of this book is gathered from field notes of research projects which did not have the study of impaired appearance at their core. Nonetheless, during that period a growing amount of my material from studies of hospitalized children, myopic children, and children with eating disorders dealt with the importance of appearance in establishing social relationships and personal self-esteem.
Looking back, I believe that my interest in this matter was first piqued by the late Doctor Kenneth Michaille of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. While examining my eyes, he asked about my work, and in response to my interest in the social psychology of medicine he described a phenomenon he had observed in children whom he had fitted with soft contact lenses. These elementary- and high-school aged children seemed to experience a "personality change" after getting the lenses, even sitting differently in the office waiting room. While they appeared depressed and shy during their initial visit and sat slumped in their seats, when they returned for the following visit after wearing the lenses for six weeks they sat straight in their chairs and engaged in conversation with other people in the waiting room.
At Dr. Michaille's suggestion, we collaborated on a project that confirmed these impressions. Using interviews, game playing, and the Coopersmith measure of self-esteem, we were able to show the elevation of self-esteem and social interaction that came from discarding "sodapop-bottle-bottom" glasses for invisible contact lenses. We
Page x
also observed some differences between social groups: girls were more concerned with cosmetic change, boys with the ability to participate in sports; children of different age levels were more or less worried about appearance.
During the early 1970s, I began a study of eating disorders in adolescent and college-age women. During this research, as one pathetic-looking anorexic after another told me of the approval her initial acts of self-starvation had generated, I began to see the importance of cultural beliefs, attitudes, and values in determining how people with "different" appearances are treated.
At this time, I was also studying the ways children are treated in hospitals. The field work for this project brought me into daily touch with children waiting for plastic surgerychildren with cleft palates, facial burns, and other deformities.
I served on a United Nations committee for stigmatized children during the United Nations International Year of the Child, 1978. The committee included many respected scholars; hearing their papers and listening to their discourse has enriched the theoretical aspect of this book. The value of working at the intersection of various disciplinary fields had become apparent by this time, too.
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