Abstract:
Social media, which is rapidly becoming an integral part of society; plays an extensive role in people’s inclination toward plastic surgery procedures.This article analyzes and examines the Instagram pages of cosmetic surgeons. The aim of this research is to conduct semiotic analysis of social media from the perspectives of body management, representation of beauty and youth ideals, and the tendency toward cosmetic surgery among women.The research methodology is qualitative semiotics analysis based on John Fisk's approach. From among 40 popular Instagram pages of cosmetic surgeons, four sample pages were selected and analyzed according to John Fiske's theory at three levels of descriptive (social codes),representational (technical codes) and ideological (ideological codes).The findings indicate that these cosmetic surgeons’ Instagram pages are influenced by patriarchal ideology and discourse.This process contributes to the pathologization of aging,the objectification of beauty and youth, identity construction, commodification of women, stereotypical representation and the engineering of the taste for beauty and youth through medical discourse about appearance and the body, particularly regarding aged or natural bodies. Through the use of cultural industry and advertising,it promotes consumerism, and thus plays a significant role in encouraging women to undergo cosmetic and rejuvenation surgeries while strengthening the motivation of these procedures.
Machine summary:
The aim of this research is the semiotic analysis of social media from the perspective of body management, the representation of beauty and youth ideals, and the incitement to cosmetic surgery among women.
This trend contributes to the pathologization of aging, the obsession with staying young, the construction of beauty and youth as objects, the identity transformation through the commodification of women, stereotypical representation, and the engineering of beauty and youth tastes through media discourse and the medicalization of appearance and the body, especially the aged body, by utilizing the culture industry and advertising to promote the culture of consumerism.
Given the direct or indirect and intensifying effects of social media on body changes, the creation of beauty ideals of a healthy and youthful appearance, and the encouragement of cosmetic surgery and rejuvenation, it is essential to conduct a study in this regard.
Through the analysis and semiotics of content, images, and the display of manipulated bodies on the popular pages of physician influencers and the advertising pages of cosmetic surgeons on Instagram, this research examines how beauty and youth are medicalized and how women's bodies are controlled.
Collectively, these studies show that media, both as an instrumental tool for promoting beauty ideals and creating body dissatisfaction, as well as a platform for marketing cosmetic surgeries, play a key role in increasing the inclination toward these procedures.
In other words, this study seeks to understand the meanings inherent in images and how media influences the minds of audiences to accept beauty and youth standards and perform cosmetic and rejuvenation surgeries as necessary solutions.
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