Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Facade articulation“

In 1984 Colin Rowe was finally persuaded to write an introduction for a book on the work of James Stirling. In his text, Rowe claimed that he had previously resisted a similar invitation in 1973, due in part to an inability at that time to account for Stirling's lack of interest in facades. He wrote: ‘According to my reading, these [Le Corbusier's Villa Schwob and Garches] were all masters of the vertical surface; and clearly, it must have been the relative absence of this concern in Stirling which arrested my writing in 1973 and which remains my reservation about Stuttgart’. For Rowe, the missing facade of Stirling's museum extension to the Staatsgalerie stood metonymically for the absence of Stirling's visible engagement with the articulation of an ideal world, because the facade was ‘the existential interface between eye and idea’. Without a facade Rowe could not be sure that Stirling adhered to the sort of idealism that satisfied his own architectural and philosophical concerns.

The Renaissance residential architecture in the town of Cres is represented by a small number of preserved houses (palazzetti) of the local nobility which are attributed to the established stone-cutting workshop grouped around master Francesco Marangonich, a Lombard stone-cutter who arrived at Cres from the building sites of Venice and introduced Renaissance stylistic elements on the Quarnero islands. The best-known Renaissance residential building at Cres is the Marcello-Petris house which was built in the 1510s for the Minister Provincial and Bishop, Friar Antun Marcello-Petris. The Renaissance houses of the Cres nobility are characterized by their relatively large size, ashlar masonry, and the strict rhythm of the decorated openings on the representative facades. One of such buildings is the Moise house, situated in the medieval centre of the town, at a prominent site where the two main streets of the time crossed. Documents from the archive of the Franciscan monastery at Cres witness that in 1441, “Ser Andrea Moisenich” exchanged a garden for the house of “Nobilis Ser Stefano de Petris”, who had the Petris palace built before 1405, meaning that the present-day Moise house might be identified with the old Petris palace. It features the coats of arms of these two families from the same period, and, therefore, it could have functioned as a shared residence of both families, which was frequently the case in Venice, for example, when it came to large palaces with two residential floors and two courtyards, which are both elements of the Moise house. The Moise house is the largest residential building of Renaissance Cres and, through its size, it can be compared to prominent examples of large palaces in Dalmatian towns. It has not been the subject of scholarly and expert research because of its many alterations, the relatively poor preservation of its original features, and the loss of its representative appearance, all of which means that its basic characteristics remained unknown. Conservation works revealed the layout of its ground plan and established that it was conceived as an emulation of the Venetian model, with a central hall and four lateral chambers. These features set the Moise house apart from other Renaissance residential buildings at Cres as the only one which adopted and displayed the high Renaissance symmetry of ground plan, which is also reflected on the representative facade. Analysis of the plaster samples taken from the walls has resulted in their stratigraphy, which confirms the hypothesis that all the walls of the central salone were painted a secco in the seventeenth century.The conservation works carried out on the representative facade unveiled the position of the Renaissance windows, which indicates that the articulating rhythm was two single-light windows – a double-light window – two single-light windows, which was corroborated by the discovery of the dressed inner window splays. Such an arrangement was common practice in Venetian Gothic residential architecture but, in the territory of present-day Croatia, it gained prominence only in the Renaissance, and the Moise house is the only example of this at Cres. The second floor of the Moise house repeated the plan of the first, which implies that originally there would have been two sumptuous storeys. The vaulted rooms on the ground floor did not communicate with one another but formed separate units in a direct relationship with the street or courtyards and it is likely that they had a utilitarian function as shops or storage spaces, having no vertical communication inside the house with the residential floors, which were connected by means of a single flight staircase. The building had two representative courtyards; the west one gave way to subsequent additions but it was recorded in the Land Registry as early as 1821. On the ground floor, the courtyard had a porch with two arches above which was a gallery with a balustrade, traces of which were discovered through test-probes in the floor. In the small east courtyard, the remains of the Renaissance porch, supported by the excellently carved pillars have been preserved, while in the floor under the staircase vault, a circular, finely-dressed stone opening belonging to a well was found; its well head is today located on the ground floor of the house. The two representative courtyards are an exception in the densely-knit urban texture of Cres, which places the Moise house in a wider context of Renaissance residential architecture in the Adriatic. Its local variety would be the positioning of the well under the vault of the staircase, which is characteristic of the vernacular architecture in medieval Cres. In comparison to other similar buildings at Cres, the Moise house is unique in that it is the only Renaissance house of the nobility with a regular plan; other Renaissance houses are of a mostly irregular quadrangular plan, including the most representative example of the palazzetto of the Cres nobility, the Marcello-Petris house. The Moise house is also the only building to have a symmetrical interior layout, which resonates with the symmetrical articulation of the representative facade, while in the case of the Marcello-Petris house, the consistent rhythm of the richly decorated windows in the south facade are a screen of sorts placed before the asymmetrically-arranged interior space.The construction of such a large building, at a dominant position in the medieval core can be explained by the role of the original commissioners, the Petris family, as the most prominent noble family at Cres, while the credit for the contemporary Renaissance organization of the interior – with the only extant example of a central representative hall in the Renaissance residential architecture at Cres – belongs to the builders, who had already demonstrated knowledge of contemporary Venetian models on the well-known portal of the collegiate church at Cres.The Moise house was marginalized in previous overviews of the Renaissance residential architecture because of the modest state of preservation of its Renaissance stone sculpture. The results of the conservation works, and the analysis of the spatial organization, ground plan, and location of this building, but also the analysis of historical records, should contribute to a clearer perception of the Moise house in the context of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century residential architecture on the east Adriatic coast, and to a re-assessment of its diminished representative importance, the value which is hidden in the architectural structure, concept and context, within the frame of the urban texture of medieval Cres.

Melaka shophouses are now threatened by urban development which involves the conversion of the image and the changing of the urban fabric. The aim of this study was to clarify conservation issues in Melaka and to review building design and its influence which involves the aspect of site and facade typology. However, the focus should not only on the building facade but should also take into consideration the environmental factors that lead to building defect. 7his problem identißed could be overcome by comprehensive conservation planning and design study guidelines in order to (come up with) detailed articulations for conservation guidelines of Melaka Shophouse. Keywords: Historical Building; Melaka Shophouse; Building Typology; Building Documentation; Conservation Guidelines; Planning and Design eISSN 2514-751X © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. https://doi.org/10.21834/aje-bs.v3i8.279

La parfaite correction des anomalies de la position des dents observées dans les dysmorphoses dento-faciales ne doit pas être le seul critère de réussite des traitements d’orthopédie dento-faciale. Il faut aussi, sous peine de graves dysfonctionnements des articulations temporo-mandibulaires et de troubles apnéiques du sommeil, ultérieurs : (1) que les têtes condyliennes et les branches montantes mandibulaires soient situées en bonne position par rapport à l’apophyse basilaire et au rachis cervical; (2) que l’os hyoïde ne soit pas trop ptôsé par rapport au disque intervertébral C3-C4.

La rééducation maxillo-faciale, souvent recommandée pour accompagner le traitement en orthodontie et prévenir toute récidive, consiste, comme toutes les autres rééducations, à faire prendre conscience aux patients des différentes postures et praxies erronées. Son but est d’en montrer les bonnes, de donner les moyens musculaires et articulaires pour les réaliser et surtout d’automatiser tous ces processus. Cet automatisme est le plus long et le plus difficile à obtenir. Notre intervention se fait à plusieurs niveaux : la langue (posture de repos, déglutition, phonation), les peauciers, la ventilation, les articulations temporaux mandibulaires, les habitudes nocives et la posture. La dernière séance consiste à vérifier que tous les automatismes sont définitivement acquis.

Introduction : L’articulation temporo-mandibulaire est une articulation hautement adaptative : les dysfonctions de l’appareil manducateur (DAM) surviennent quand ses capacités d’adaptation sont dépassées. Les étiologies occlusales ont longtemps été incriminées comme seules responsables, il existe actuellement un consensus pour minimiser leur implication. Il est désormais admis que les DAM sont des pathologies d’étiologie multfactorielle, conjuguant problèmes d’occlusion, para-fonctions, troubles de posture, dyspraxies oro-faciales et stress. Matériels et méthodes : À travers cet article, les auteurs présentent l’apport de la kinésithérapie dans la prise en charge de ces pathologies. Résultats : Si le traitement de la symptomatologie reste nécessaire à l’éviction de la douleur, il est toutefois fondamental, pour mieux traiter, d’identifier les mécanismes pathogènes. La prise en charge rééducative propose donc une stratégie kinésithérapique apportant une réponse étiologique : en rééduquant la fonction, elle pérennise les résultats obtenus. Discussion : Le caractère plurifactoriel des étiologies des DAM fait, à ce titre, de la rééducation maxillo-faciale l’alliée incontournable de l’odontologiste ou de l’orthodontiste dans leur prise en charge pluri-disciplinaire.

Delivering active pharmaceutical agents to disease sites using soft polymeric nanoparticles continues to be a topical area of research. It is becoming increasingly evident that the composition of amphiphilic macromolecules plays a significant role in developing efficient nanoformulations. Branched architectures with asymmetric polymeric arms emanating from a central core junction have provided a pivotal venue to tailor their key parameters. The build-up of miktoarm stars offers vast polymer arm tunability, aiding in the development of macromolecules with adjustable properties, and allows facile inclusion of endogenous stimulus-responsive entities. Miktoarm star-based micelles have been demonstrated to exhibit denser coronae, very low critical micelle concentrations, high drug loading contents, and sustained drug release profiles. With significant advances in chemical methodologies, synthetic articulation of miktoarm polymer architecture, and determination of their structure-property relationships, are now becoming streamlined. This is helping advance their implementation into formulating efficient therapeutic interventions. This review brings into focus the important discoveries in the syntheses of miktoarm stars of varied compositions, their aqueous self-assembly, and contributions their formulations are making in advancing the field of drug delivery.

Résumé Après la tentative non aboutie d’Eugène Boré (1816–1891) en 1839, la première grammaire française à l’usage des Persans ne paraît qu’en 1882 sous le titre d’Orthographie française ou Règles de l’orthographe de la langue française simplifiée et rendues à leurs principes naturels. L’auteur, Jules Richard (1816–1891), n’y développe que la partie consacrée aux articulations et aux parties du discours et ne parvient jamais à publier l’intégralité de l’ouvrage qu’il avait rédigé à l’attention des élèves de l’école polytechnique de Téhéran et qui est censé contenir une partie propre à la syntaxe. Son fils Joseph Richard (1285 [1868/69] – 1354 [1935/36]) tentera de rectifier le tir en publiant la Nouvelle méthode pratique et facile pour apprendre la langue française (21894), une sorte de ‘méthode Ahn’ où la grammaire ne figure qu’en abrégé sous forme de définitions ou d’applications. L’Orthographie se caractérise spécialement par le nombre des questions théoriques discutées en notes entièrement rédigées en français, par le recours à des termes grammaticaux peu communs, par la traduction originale, en persan, de certains termes français, ainsi que par la neutralisation de certaines oppositions verbales dans la traduction des paradigmes du français.

AbstractWhile spatial justice could be the most radical offspring of law’s recent spatial turn, it remains instead a geographically informed version of social justice. The majority of the existing literature on the subject has made some politically facile assumptions about space, justice and law, thereby subsuming the potentially radical into the banal. In this article, I suggest that the concept of spatial justice is the most promising platform on which to redefine, not only the connection between law and geography, but more importantly, the conceptual foundations of both law and space. More concretely, the article attempts two things: first, a radical understanding of legal spatiality. Space is not just another parameter for law, a background against which law takes place, or a process that the law needs to take into consideration. Space is intertwined with normative production in ways that law often fails to acknowledge, and part of this article is a re-articulation of the connection. Second, to suggest a conception of spatial justice that derives from a spatial law. Such a conception cannot rely on given concepts of distributive or social justice. Instead, the concept of spatial justice put forth here is informed by post-structural, feminist, post-ecological and other radical understandings of emplacement and justice, as well as arguably the most spatial of philosophical discourses, that of Deleuze–Guattari and the prescribed possibilities of space as manifold.

Abstract Background We investigated a novel minimally invasive surgical platform for use in the oropharynx, hypopharynx, and larynx for single-port transoral surgery used in concert with standard transoral laryngeal and pharyngeal instrumentation. Methods The preclinical investigational device by Fortimedix Surgical B.V. (Netherlands) features two channels for manually controlled flexible articulating surgical instruments. A third central channel accepts both rigid and flexible endoscopes. The system is coupled to a standard laryngoscope for transoral access. In three cadaver models, we evaluated the surgical capabilities using wristed grasping instruments, microlaryngeal scissors, monopolar cautery, and a laser fiber sheath. Procedures were performed within the oropharynx, supraglottis, glottis, subglottis, and hypopharynx. Results Within the oropharynx, we found adequate strength, range of motion, and dexterity to perform lateral oropharyngectomy and tongue base resection. Within the larynx, visualization was achieved with a variety of instruments including a flexible, 0° and 30° rigid endoscope. The glottis, supraglottis, pyriform sinuses, post-cricoid space, and esophageal inlet were readily accessible. Visualization and manipulation of grasping, laser, and monopolar cautery instruments were also possible within the subglottis. Instrument reach and accuracy facilitated completion of a delicate micro-flap on the true vocal fold. Other procedures included vocal fold resection, cricopharyngeal myotomy, and resection of subglottic mucosa. Conclusions From this initial proof of concept experience with this novel platform, we found a wide range of procedures within the oropharynx, larynx, and hypopharynx to be feasible. Further work is needed to evaluate its applicability to the clinical setting. The ability of this platform to be used with conventional instrumentation may provide an opportunity for complex transoral surgery to be performed in a facile manner at greatly reduced cost.

Generally speaking, paleochristian memoriae have emerged out of the funeral traditions of the pagan world of Antiquity with its particular expression of the cult of deceased, sustained with the culture that had come out of Christian theology and aesthetics. It came together withnew architectural forms some of which were characterized with cross-like forms, not only as a general symbol of new faith, but also as the spatial projection, model after which one had to build. It is defined by two axes that cross at the right angle, the framework of the overall architecturalcomposition, factor of building’s extension in its entire length and width, as well as the height of the building that is dominated and marked by a dome. This particular structure of the building expresses its own essence, memorial use and the Christian paradigm. Through form and function, these buildings have become a distinguished phenomenon of the Christian civilization, valued in the architecture from the late antiquity to Romanesque period.Mature form of the space intended for the cult of the deceased, particularly when small cruciform churches are in question, is remarkably expressed in the preserved chapel of St. Lawrence, widely known as the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, one of two identical buildings once located at the ends of the narthex of the Ravennate church of the Holy Cross. The lower space of Theodoric’s mausoleum in Ravenna is also cruciform, however one should also remember emperor Justinian’s cruciform tombin Constantinople church of the Holy Apostles. It was demolished in the 15 century, together with the whole complex, and is known only through historical sources.Together with the Ravennate memoriae, such tombs could have – directly or indirectly – influence the formation of the cruciform memoriae in the Adriatic cultural landscape from Late Antiquity to Romanesque period.This paper elaborates the group of approximately fifteen buildings that demonstrate – through their forms and funerary functions – perseverance of particular cruciform plan of a memoriae within the Adriatic ambiance. A particularly numerous group is that of southern Istria, which consists of the Pula cathedral baptistery, two chapels by the basilica of Sta Maria Formosa and St. Mathew’s chapel in Pula, that of St. Catharine on a nearby islet and the supposed cruciform church of St. Andrew on an island in front of Rovinj. To such a concentration of the paleochristian memoriae one should link two early-mediaeval chapels, that of St. Clement in Pula and St. Thomas’ near Rovinj. The latter’s forms were already commented by Ivan Matejčić to follow and repeat paleochristian features. Among these features there are three protruding apses similar to those of St. Catharine’s. Therefore, it seems that the forms and themeasures of pre-Romanesque chapels were taken from those of the nearby Byzantine buildings, rather than from the distant Carolingian examples in Italy or France. Earlier and later southern Istrian memoriae are treated here as a typological group with emphasized regional features and continuity. Their forms differ only in some less important details, e.g. facades being either flat or articulated with lesenes. Their common features are, on the other hand, elementary architectural composition, spatial structure that consists of four branches and the dome hidden in the drum, as well as their dimensions and proportions. An element ofparticular interest is the octagonal upper part of the dome on Pula baptistery, that on St. Catharine’s on an islet in front of Pula as well as one on St. Andrew’s on an islet in front of Rovinj. These are probably reconstructions of the older solution. Within the supposedly later construction, there is a dome, a trula, as Pietro Kandler has named it, relating it with the Longboard architecture. It is carried by squinches.This solution is, actually, the Byzantine tradition in the area of Ravennate influences. A similar dome is constructed above the cruciform chapel consecrated to St. Mary Mater Domini (Theotokos), built next to the church of St. Felix and Fortunato in Vicenza, in 6 century. It seems that the same tradition was followed by very similar buildings, Paduan chapel of San Prosdocimo, and the memory erected by Santi Apostoli in Verona. On the other hand, St. Clement’s in Pula did not have a dome of such type and this church had yet another significant difference from the other Istrian chapels, the rectangular extension of areas in front of the apses. Another example that stands out from the group is the church of St. Euphemia at Saline bay in Lim channel. It is an Early Romanesque chapel with three apses at the rear. Lateral branches are reduced; they are much shorter than the front one, and give an impression of a transept rather than cruciform branches, as in other churches of the group. The upper part of the walls give no evidence of neither vaults nor a dome.Differently from the typological unity of the paleochristian and early mediaeval Istrian memoriae, those in Dalmatia show significant variability of the theme, already noticeable at the physiognomy of the earlier examples. For instance, the small baptistery in Baška on the island of Krk is an orderly cruciform building with relatively short branches and unarticulated flat walls, similar to Pula baptistery. The ground plan of St. Martin’s on the island of Cres is considerably different. It was a considerably larger building, probably in a memorial function related to a nearby villa rustica. It also has the rectangular extension in front of the apse, like St. Clement’s at Pula. Its walls show no traces of vaulted constructions. In a later phase, it was probably used as a parish church, like some examples of Dalmatian triconchal churches. A particular articulation of the walls, different from all of the Istrian and Dalmatiancruciform memoriae, was that of St. Cyprian’s chapel at Gata. Its short branches are rectangular on the outside, while on the inside they have inscribed round apses. Therefore, the outer surfaces have narrow round niches as relief of the thickened angles. Memory of the Holy Cross at Nin also has a round apse inscribed in the rectangular body of its rear branch. However, it is flanked by two smaller protruding apses, i.e. three in total. Other branches are vaulted with a half-dome on angular squinches that are also constructed below the drum with the dome inside. Ivo Petricioli has long ago suggested that its proportions indicate influences of the early mediaeval Byzantine architecture. This is further corroborated by its outer surfaces articulated with shallow niches. These features do not appear in Carolingian architecture, so it seems that the Holy Cross should be dated into the 10th or the 11th century. It also should be related tothe influences from nearby Zadar - contemporary capitol of the Byzantine Theme of Dalmatia - with the church of St. Vitus whose features, both general form and details, are of the same type of the building. Furthermore, they should be compared with the chapel of St. Donatus at Kornić on Krk Island. This small church is of apparently different groundplan, but one could still consider it a cruciform type. Its front and rear branches are rectangular, and there are indications that the rear branch had a round apse inscribed, similarly to the memory of the Holy Cross at Nin. However, its lateral branches are relatively small round apses, protruding from the sides of the chapel. Among them, there is a relativelyspacious central section with the dome constructed on the squinches. Miljenko Jurković has plausibly dated the church in 12th century, while I believe that it confirms the continuity of the paleochristian cruciform type of the Christian memory in Istria and Dalmatia from Late Antiquity to theRomanesque period. This is proven by some contemporary constructions, such as the chapel of an unknown title at Crkvina near Kašić, near Biljani Donji, that has also been dated in Romanesque period. In spite of some individual differences all of the memoriae compared in this paper, both groups are assembled by numerousness and similarities of both cruciform plans and funerary functions. Also, the influence of Adriatic Byzantine centres, particularly that of Ravenna, Pula and Zadar, is noticeable in formation of the regional characteristics of memorial architecture in the cultural ambiance of Istria and Dalmatia, within the context of long-lasting continuity of its forms and functions, from Late Antiquity to Romanesque period.

Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia depicts the last days of the earth through the eyes of a young woman, Justine, who is suffering from a severe depressive illness. In the hours leading up to the Earth’s destruction through the impact of a massive blue planet named Melancholia, Justine tells her sister that “the Earth is evil, we don’t need to grieve for it. Nobody will miss it.” We can read this apparently anti-environmental statement in one sense as a symptom of Justine’s melancholic depression. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines melancholia as a form of depression that is “qualitatively different from the sadness experienced during bereavement” (419). It is as if Justine’s illness relates to some ungrievable loss, a loss so pathologically far reaching that it short circuits the normal psychology of mourning. But, in another sense, does her statement not strike us with the ring of an absolute and inescapable truth? In the wake of our destruction, there would be no one left to mourn it since human memory itself would have been destroyed along with the global ecosystems which support and sustain it. The film’s central dramatic metaphor is that the experience of a severe depressive episode is like the destruction of the world. But the metaphor can be turned around to suggest that ecological crisis, real irreparable damage to the environment to the point where it may no longer be able to support human life, affects us with a collective melancholia because the destruction of the human species is a strictly ungrievable event. The discoveries of Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century constituted a major thought event which placed the emergence of humanity within a temporal context extending far beyond the limits of human memory. Claire Colebrook suggests that the equivalent event for present times is the thought of our own extinction, the awareness that environmental changes could bring about the end of the species: “[the] extinction awareness that is coming to the fore in the twenty-first century adds the sense of an ending to the broader awareness of the historical emergence of the human species.” While the scientific data is stark, our mediated cultural experience provides us with plenty of opportunities to, in Colebrook’s words, “[domesticate] the sense of the human end” by affirming “various modes of ‘post-humanism’” in ways which ultimately deny the shattering truth of extinction. This domestication obviously takes place in one sense on the level of a conscious denial of the scale of the ecological crisis. On another level, however, environmentally conscious representations of “the planet” or “nature” as a sheer autonomous objectivity, a self-contained but endangered natural order, may ultimately be the greatest obstacle to genuine ecological thinking. By invoking the concept of a non-human nature in perfect balance with itself we factor ourselves out of the ecological equation while simultaneously drawing on the power of an objectifying gaze. Slavoj Žižek gives the example of Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us which imagines a contemporary world in which all humans have disappeared and nature reasserts itself in the ruins of our abandoned cities. Žižek describes this as the ultimate expression of ideology because: we, the humans, are here reduced to a pure disembodied gaze observing our own absence [...] this is the fundamental subjective position of fantasy: to be reduced to a gaze observing the world in the condition of the subject’s non-existence—like the fantasy of witnessing the act of one’s own conception, parental copulation, or the act of witnessing one’s own burial (80). In many ways, the very spectacle or fantasy of our own destruction has provided us with a powerful means of naturalising it—environmental catastrophe occurs to and in a “nature” whose essence excludes us—and this renders it compatible with a psychology by which the human end is itself internalised, processed, and normalised. Ironically, this normalisation may have been affected to a great extent through the popularisation, over the last ten years or so, of environmental discourses relating to the grave threats of climate change. A film such as Wall-E, for example, shows us an entirely depopulated, desertified world in which the eponymous robot character sorts through the trash of human history, living an almost-human life among the ruins. The robot functions as a kind of proxy humanity, placing us, the viewers, in a position posterior to our own species extinction and thus sending us the ultimately reassuring message that, even in our absence, our absence will be noted. In a similar way, the drama-documentary The Age of Stupid presents a future world devastated by environmental collapse in which a lone archivist presides over the whole digitised memory of humanity and carefully constructs out of actual news and documentary footage the story of our demise. These narratives and others like them ultimately serve, whatever their intentions, to domesticate the end of humanity through the logic of a post-human mastery of the story of our own obliteration. The starker truth with which Melancholia confronts us is that the end of humanity cannot and will not be internalised by any process of human memorialisation. Von Trier’s film does not portray any post-catastrophe world from which we might be able to extract a degree of psychological comfort or residual sense of mastery. Rather, the narrative frame is entirely bounded by the impact event, which we witness first in the film’s opening shots and then again at its close. There is no narrative time posterior to the impact and yet for us, the viewers, everything happens in its shattering aftermath, according to the strange non-successional logic of the future-anterior. Everything begins and ends with the moment of impact. If the narrative itself is concerned with the lives of the characters, particularly the effects of the main character’s depression on her family relationships, then the film’s central event remains radically disjunctive, incapable of being processed on this interpersonal level through the standard cinematic tropes of the disaster or survival genres. The value of regarding Melancholia as an environmental film, then, is that it profoundly de-psychologises the prospect of our extinction while forcing the burden of this event’s unfathomable content onto us. Von Trier’s film suggests that melancholy, not mourning, is a more apt emotional register for ecological crisis and for the extinction awareness it brings, and in this sense Melancholia represents a valuable alternative to more standard environmental narratives which remain susceptible to ideological reinscriptions of human (or post-human) mastery. As ecocritic Timothy Morton suggests, “melancholy is more apt, even more ethically appropriate, to an ecological situation in which the worst has already happened, and in which we find ourselves [...] already fully implicated” (75–6). The most influential account of mourning and melancholia comes from Sigmund Freud, who described these attitudes as two different ways of dealing with loss. In the process of mourning, Freud states that there comes the realisation “that the loved object no longer exists” which “[demands] that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object” (245). The healthy outcome of this very painful process is that our libidinal attachments are free once again to take on another object of love; the lost object can be replaced according to a logic of temporal succession. Melancholia also results from a loss, says Freud, but this time it relates not simply or primarily to a replaceable external object but, more complexly, to something in the ego itself, not a discrete thing in the world but a certain way of being in the world which the lost object facilitated. Freud writes that the trauma of melancholia is thus manifested by the ego itself taking on or embodying the loss. The ego, stripped of its sense of being, comes to mimic the non-existence of that which once supported it. The “delusion” of the melancholic’s depressive state, says Freud, stems from the fact that something has ruptured her affective and libidinal attachment to the world, but this cannot be psychologically processed in terms of a replaceable loss since what is lost was never simply an external object. Her world is struck by an absence that cannot be mourned because it is kept alive as a non-being which she is. She has taken on the burden of this structural impossibility and does not pursue an imaginary resolution of it which, to invoke Žižek’s Lacanian terms once more, would involve her submitting to the subjective position of fantasy (i.e. becoming a witness to her own non-existence). The melancholic’s attitude is, Freud observes, “psychologically very remarkable” because it involves “an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life” (246). The melancholic carves out an existence apparently contrary to nature. This is the context in which Justine remarks that the earth, as an ungrievable object, is “evil.” Her melancholia is never explained in the course of the film, and, indeed, we see little of her personality apart from the events which manifest her psychological crisis. The film opens with the moment of interplanetary impact itself. The great blue planet of Melancholia approaches and begins to swallow the earth into its atmosphere. We cut immediately to Justine and her sister in the moments just before the impact: the air is electrified by the approaching collision and birds cascade from the trees. Our way into the narrative is this moment of chaos and dispersion, but von Trier’s depiction of it, his use of highly choreographed slow-motion shots resembling tableaux vivants, distance us from any sense of urgency or immediacy. It is as if the closer we come to the collision, the less real and the more stylised the world becomes; as if the impact holds a content which cannot be rendered in realist terms. By contrast, the subsequent scenes focusing on Justine’s interpersonal drama use a shaky, handheld camera which embeds us in the action. The narrative follows Justine on her wedding day. As events unfold we see cracks appear in the wedding party’s luxurious facade: Justine’s divorced parents argue viciously; her wealthy brother-in-law, who funded the wedding, fears that the occasion may be ruined by petty squabbling, to his great expense. Beneath these cracks, however, we realise that there is a deeper, more inexplicable crack opening up within Justine herself. At one point she retreats with her newlywed husband from the tumult of the wedding party. We expect from this scene an articulation or partial resolution, perhaps, of Justine’s mental conflict, or at least an insight into her character. In a more conventional story, this moment of conjugal intimacy would allow Justine to express an “authentic” desire, distinct from the superficial squabbling of her family, a means to “be herself.” But this doesn’t happen. Justine inexplicably rejects her husband’s overtures. In clinical terms, we might say that Justine’s behaviour corresponds to “anhedonia,” a loss of interest in the normal sources of pleasure or enjoyment. Invoking Freud, we could add to this that the very objective viability of her libidinal attachments has been called into question and that this is what precipitates her crisis. If such attachments are what ground us in reality, Justine’s desire seems to have become ungrounded through the emergence of something “nonobjectifiable,” to borrow a term from philosophers Deleuze and Guattari (What is Philosophy?, 209). This “something” is revealed only in the second half of the film with the appearance of Melancholia and the prospect of its obliterating impact. Justine is drawn to this new planet, in one scene luxuriating naked beneath its blue glow. We could argue, in one sense, that she has discovered in Melancholia a correlate to her own self-destructive desire: the only thing that can possibly gratify her is the annihilation of the earth itself. However in another, more constructive sense, we can say that her melancholic desire amounts to a kind of geophilosophical critique, a political and ultimately ecological protest against the territorialisation of her desire according to a supposed acceptability of objects. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that, if desire’s libidinal attachments form a kind of ground or “territory” then all territories interact with one another at some level because they are all equally founded on “lines of deterritorialization” sweeping them towards a mutually shared, extra-territorial outside (A Thousand Plateaus, 9). Or, putting it in plainer terms: beneath every ground is a non-ground such that the earth cannot ultimately ground itself in itself. Every mental, material, or social territory is founded upon this global movement of ungrounding. The trauma of Justine’s melancholia refers us to something which cannot be resolved within the given territories of her social or interpersonal milieus. While her illness can be registered in terms of the events of the film’s narrative time, the film’s central event—the collision with Melancholia—remains irreducible to the memorial properties of storytelling. We may thus argue that the impact event is not strictly speaking an element of the film’s narrative, but rather a pure cinematic sign evoking a radical form of ecological openness. The film moves through different territories—conjugal, familial, economic, scientific—but what propels us from one territory to another is the impact event whose content is reducible to none of these territories. Of all the film’s characters, only Justine is “open” to this absolute irreducibility, this resistance to closure. Her openness to Melancholia is not determined by whether or not it can be objectified, that is, rendered assimilable to the terms of a given territory. Both her brother-in-law (an amateur astronomer) and her sister attempt to calculate the chances of impact, but Justine remains open to it in a manner which does not close off that which precludes survival. In the end, as Melancholia bears down on the Earth, Justine’s attitude—which in Freud’s terms is antithetical to the instinct for life—turns out to be the most appropriate one. The point of this article is certainly not to argue that we should acquiesce to the traumatic realities of environmental crisis. Its aim, rather, is to suggest that well-being and harmony may no longer describe the appropriate emotional register for ecological thinking, given the current urgency of the crisis. Human and ecological health may, after all, be radically different and incommensurable things. The great anthropologist and structuralist thinker Claude Lévi-Strauss once remarked: I am concerned with the well-being of plants and animals that are threatened by humanity. I think ecologists make the mistake of thinking that they can defend humans and nature at the same time. I think it is necessary to decide if one prefers humans or nature. I am on the side of nature (qtd in Conley, 66). Lévi-Strauss may well be right when he says that a common human and ecological health may be an illusion of wishful thinking. However, what if there is a common trauma, whose ineradicability would not be a tragedy but, rather, evidence of radical openness in which we no longer have to pick sides (humans or plants and animals)? What if the proper “base” from which to begin thinking ecologically were not a conception of a harmonious human-ecological whole but a foundational non-harmony, an encounter with which contains something ineliminably traumatising? In a recent paper, the philosopher Reza Negarestani proposes just such a traumatic account of ecological openness. All existence, understood geophilosophically, is, says Negarestani, “conditioned by a concatenation of traumas or cuts [...] there is no single or isolated psychic trauma [...] there is no psychic trauma without an organic trauma and no organic trauma without a terrestrial trauma that in turn is deepened into open cosmic vistas.” Ecological openness, in this sense, would be necessarily melancholic, in the terms described above, in that it would necessitate the perpetual precariousness of those links by which we seek to ground ourselves. Ecology is all too often given to a “mournful” attitude, which is, as we’ve argued, the very attitude of psychological incorporation, healing, and normalisation. Similarly, “nature,” we are told, holds the key to harmonious self-regulation. But what if today such notions are obstacles to a genuine awareness of the ecological realities facing us all (humans and non-humans)? What if this ideal of nature were just a product of our own desire for stability, order, and regularity—for some imaginary extra-social and non-human point of reference by which to attain to a position of mastery in the telling of the story of ourselves? References Age of Stupid, The. Dir. Fanny Armstrong. Spanner Films, 2009. American Psychological Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th Ed. Text Revision. Washington: American Psychological Association, 2000. Colebrook, Claire. “Introduction: Framing the End of the Species.”.Extinction. Ed. Claire Colebrook. Open Humanities Press. 2012. 14 April 2012. Conley, Vera Andermatt. Ecopolitics: The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought. London: Routledge, 1997. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 24. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1917. 237–58. Melancholia. Dir. Lars von Trier. Zontropa, 2011. Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Negarestani, Reza. “On the Revolutionary Earth: A Dialectic in Territopic Materialism.” Dark Materialism Conference. Natural History Museum, London. January 12th 2011. Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: Picador, 2007. WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Pixar, 2008. Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. London: Verso, 2010.

IntroductionTransformation, claims McCracken, is the expression of consumer agency and individual freedom in which consumers, as “co-creators of culture,” are empowered to creatively construct new improved selves (xvi). No longer an “extraordinary event for extraordinary creatures,” transformation today is routine and accessible (McCracken xxi). Contemporary consumer culture encourages individuals to enact these transformations by turning to the market to purchase the resources they require to achieve their desired identity (Ellis et al. 179). This market model of transformation embraces the concept of the marketplace exchange where the one party satisfies the needs of the other in a mutually beneficial exchange relationship. For consumers, the market enables transformation through the purchase and consumption of the desired products and services which support identity building.Critics, however, argue that markets have less positive effects. While it is too simplistic to claim that markets manipulate consumers, marketing exchanges constitute an enduring shaping force on individuals and society (Laczniak and Murphy). Markets shape consumer identities by homogenising them and suppressing their self-expressive capabilities (Kozinets 22). As producers become more powerful, “the market is transformed from a consumer-driven mechanism to a sphere where the producers assimilate consumers’ needs to their own through commercial activity” (Sassatelli 76) (my italics). Marketing and promotion have a persuasive influence and their role in the transformation process is a crucial element in understanding the consumer’s impetus to transform. Consumer identity is of course neither fully a “liberatory act” nor “wholly dictated by the market” (Ellis et al. 182), but there is a relationship between consumer autonomy and the dictates of the market which can be explored through focusing on the transformation of identity through the consumption of cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is an important site of enquiry as a social practice which “merges the attention given to the body by an individual person with the values and priorities of the consumer society” (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 490). The body, as Kathy Davis highlighted, has long been seen as a commodity which can be endlessly transformed (Davis, Reshaping the Female Body), and the market for cosmetic surgery is at the forefront of this commodification process (Aizura 305). What is new, however, is the increasing marketisation and commercialisation of the cosmetic surgery industry combined with rising consumerism in which surgical transformation can be purchased simply as a “lifestyle choice alongside fashion, fitness and therapy” (Elliott 7). In the cosmetic surgery market, “patients” are consumers. Rather than choosing cosmetic surgery in order to feel whole or normal, contemporary consumers see surgery as a grooming practice which is part of a body maintenance routine (Jones).As the cosmetic surgery market becomes progressively more competitive, it relies more and more on marketing and promotion for its survival. The intense rivalry between providers drives them, in some cases, to aggressive and often unethical promotional practices. In the related field of pharmaceuticals for example, marketers have been charged with explicitly manipulating social understanding of disease in order to increase profits (Brennan, Eagle, and Rice 17). Unlike TV make-over shows whose primary purpose is to entertain, or celebrity culture which influences indirectly through example, cosmetic surgery promotion sets out with intent to persuade consumers to choose surgical transformation. Cosmetic surgery is presented to consumers “through the neoliberal prism of choice,” encouraging women (mostly) to choose surgery as a self-improvement practice in order to “feel good or pamper herself” (Gurrieri, Brace-Govan, and Previte 534). In a promotional culture which valorises external values and ‘the new’ (Fatah 1), the cost, risk, and pain of surgery are downplayed as an increasing array of self-transformative possibilities are presented as consumption choices. This scenario sees the impetus to transform as driven as much by marketing imperatives as by consumers’ free choice. Indeed in mobilising the rhetoric of choice, the “autonomous” consumer, it seems, plays into the hands of the cosmetic surgery industry.This paper explores consumer transformation through cosmetic surgery by focusing on the tension between the rhetoric of consumer autonomy, freedom, and choice and that of the industry’s marketing and promotional practices in the United Kingdom (UK). I argue that while the consumer is an active player, expressing their freedom and agency in choosing self-transformation through surgery, that autonomy is influenced and constrained by the marketing and promotional practices of the industry. I focus on the inherent paradox in the discourse of transformation in consumer culture which advocates individual consumer freedom and creativity yet limits these freedoms to “acceptable” bodily forms constructed as the norm by promotional images of the cosmetic surgery industry. To paraphrase Susan Bordo, those promotions which espouse consumer choice and self-determination simultaneously eradicate individual difference and circumscribe choice (Unbearable Weight 250). Here I explore how ideals of autonomy, freedom, and choice are utilised to support consumer surgical transformation. Drawing on market research, professional publications, blogs and industry webpages used by UK consumers as they search for information, I demonstrate how marketing and promotion adopt these ideals to provide a visual reference and a language for consumer transformation, which has the effect of shaping and limiting consumer freedom and creativity. Consumer Transformation as Expression of Freedom Contemporary consumers need not be content just to admire the appearance of celebrities and film stars, but can actively engage in the creative construction of new improved selves through surgical transformation (McCracken). This transformation is often expressed by consumers as a liberatory act, as is illustrated by the women surveyed for a UK Department of Health report. As one respondent explains, “I think it’s just the fact that they can . . . and I think over the years, women have a battle with their bodies, as they change, different ages, they do, they struggle with trying to accept it over different years and the fact that you can, it’s like ‘wow, so what, it’s a bit of money, let’s just change ourselves’” (UK Department of Health 32). Even young consumers see cosmetic surgery as an easily available transformative option, such as this 16-year-old female research respondent who describes surgery as “Things that you don’t really need but you just feel you want to have them” (UK Department of Health 33). As these women attest, cosmetic surgery is seen as an increasingly normal and everyday practice. By rhetorically constructing the possibility of transformation as an expression of individual consumer empowerment (“wow, so what, it’s a bit of money, let’s just change ourselves”), they distance the practice “from negative associations with vanity” and oppression (Tait 131). This postmodern consumer is no dupe or victim but a “conscious subject who modifies their body as a project of identity” (Gibson 51) and for whom cosmetic surgery transformation is “the route to happiness and personal empowerment” (Tait 119). Surgical transformation is not a way to strive narcissistically after “an elusive beauty ideal” (Heyes 93). Instead, it is expressed as something they choose to do just for themselves—which Bordo calls the “for me” argument (“Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body”). In an increasingly visual culture, the accessibility and affordability of cosmetic surgery enable consumers, who are already accustomed to digitally editing their photographical images, to “edit” their physical bodies. This is candidly expressed by Singaporean blogger Ang Chiew Ting who writes, "When I learnt how to use Photoshop, the things that I edited about myself, those have now all been done in real life through plastic surgery. Whatever I wanted to change about my face, I have done." Yet, as I illustrate later, the emphasis on transformation as empowerment through exercising choice (“Whatever I wanted to change about my face, I have done"), plays into the hands of the industry as it “reproduces the logic of surgical industries” (Tait 121). In the politics of consumption, driven by neo-liberal ideologies, consumer choice is sovereign (Sassatelli 184), and it is in the ability to exercise choice, choosing surgery and taking responsibility for that choice, that agency and empowerment are expressed (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic). Blogger Stella Lee explains her decision as “I don't want to say I encourage plastic surgery, this is just my personal choice. It is like saying if I dye my hair purple then I want everyone to have purple hair too. It is simply just for me only. If you wish to do so, go ahead. If you're satisfied with what you have, go ahead.” This consumer is a “discerning and knowledgeable consumer” who researches information about potential surgical procedures and practitioners (Gimlin, “Imagining” 58) and embraces the ideology of self-determinism (Heyes). Consumers considering surgery may visit recommended doctors, research doctors online, and peruse beauty magazines (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic). Tatler magazine, for example, publishes an annual Beauty and Cosmetic Surgery Guide which celebrates “the newest, niftiest ways to reclaim your face and your figure” (Tatler nd). In taking responsibility for themselves, the contemporary consumer reflects the neoliberal agenda “that promotes empowerment through consumer choice and responsibility for self-care” (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic 131). Yet, consumer information on the suitability of surgery and alternative providers is often partial. As one research respondent recalled, “I just typed it into Google and then worked through whatever came up; you're trying to go for the names of companies that are a bit more reputable” (UK Department of Health 28). Internet searches most frequently identify promotional information from the surgery providers themselves including customer stories and testimonials, which seem informative in nature but which have persuasive intent to influence choice. Therefore although seemingly exerting agency by undertaking a process of search in order to make an informed choice, that choice is made within a promotional context that the consumer may not be fully aware exists.Consumer Transformation as Marketing ImperativeThe aim of marketing and promotion, as medicine meets consumerism, is to secure clients for cosmetic surgery (Mirivel). As a consequence, the discourse of cosmetic surgery is highly persuasive and commercially motivated, promoting the need for surgery by mobilising the existing ideological link between identity and physical appearance for commercial ends (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 489). Promotional strategies include drawing attention to possible deficiencies in appearance, creating opportunities for surgery by problematising normal bodily states, promising intangible benefits, and normalising surgery by positioning it within a consumerist vision of success. Consumer transformation can be driven by perceived lack, inadequacy, or deficit, where a part of the body or face does not stand up to scrutiny when compared to media images. Marketing and promotion draw attention to this lack and imply that any deficiency in appearance can be remedied by consumption practices such as the purchase of hair dye, make-up, or, more drastically, cosmetic surgery. As one research respondent considering surgery explains, “I think people want to look their best and media portrays ‘perfect’ looking people or they portray a certain image and then because it’s what you see all the time, it almost feels like if you don't look like that, then it’s wrong” (UK Department of Health 18). The influence of media on the impetus to transform is explored elsewhere (see Wegenstein), so is not addressed further here. However, the insecurity which results from such media images is further exploited by the marketing and promotional strategies adopted by cosmetic surgery providers in an increasingly competitive marketplace. This does not go unnoticed by consumers: as one research respondent noted, “They pick out your insecurities as a tactic for making you purchase stuff . . . it was supposed to be a free consultation but they definitely do pressure you into having stuff” (UK Department of Health 19). In this deficiency model of transformation, the cosmetic surgery consumer is insecure, lacking in power and volition, and convinced of her inadequacy. This is exacerbated by the promotional images of models featured on cosmetic surgery websites against which consumers evaluate their own looks in a process of social comparisons (Markey and Markey 210). This reflects Bernadette Wegenstein’s notion of the cosmetic gaze, a circular process whereby “the act of looking at our bodies and those of others is informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies of bodily modification” (2). In comparing themselves with the transformed images on surgery websites, consumers are drawn into a process of comparison that tells them how they should look. At the same time as convincing consumers of their inadequacies, providers also tell consumers that they are in control and can act autonomously to transform themselves. For example, a TV advert for The Hospital Group which shows three smiling “transformed” customers claims “If you’re unhappy with your appearance you could change it. If it affects your confidence you could overcome it. If it makes you feel self-conscious, you could take control with cosmetic surgery or dentistry from The Hospital Group” (my italics). In this way marketers marshal the neo-liberal rhetoric of consumer empowerment to encourage the consumption of cosmetic surgery and normalise the practice through the emphasis on choice. Marketing and promotional messages contribute further to these perceived deficits by problematising “normal” bodily conditions resulting from “normal” life experiences such as ageing and pregnancy. Surgeon Ran Rubinstein, for example, draws attention in his blog to thinning lips as an opportunity for lip augmentation: “Lip augmentation might seem like a trend among the younger crowd, but it’s something that people of any age can benefit from getting. As you get older, some areas of your body thin out while some thicken. You might find that you’re gaining weight around your stomach, while your lips and face are getting thin.” Problematising frames a real or perceived physical state as “as a medical problem that requires a medical solution,” subtly implying that cosmetic surgery is “an unavoidable necessity” which is medically justified (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 503). For example, Jules’s testimonial for facial fillers frames natural, and even positive, features such as smile lines as problematic: “I smile a lot and noticed some smile lines coming through.” Indeed as medicine has historically defined the female body as “deficient and in need of repair,” cosmetic surgery can be legitimately proposed as a solution for “women’s problems with their appearance” (Davis, “A Dubious Equality” 55). Promotional messages emphasise the intrinsic benefits of external transformation, encouraging consumers to opt for surgery in order to align their external appearance with how they feel inside. Much of this discourse calls on consumers’ perceptions of a disparity between how they feel inside and their external body image (Gibson 54). For example, a testimonial from “Carole Anne 69” claims that facial fillers “make me feel like I’m the best version of myself.” (Note that Carole Anne, like all the women providing testimonials for this website, including Carol 50, Jules 38, or Pamela 59, is defined by her looks and by her age.) Although Gimlin’s research suggests that the notions of the “body reflecting the ‘true’ self or re-creating one’s ‘genuine’ appearance” have become less important (“Too Good” 930), they continue to dominate in customer testimonials on surgery websites. For example, Transform breast enlargement client Rebecca exclaims, “I’m still me, but it has completely transformed how I feel about myself on the inside, how I hold and present myself on the outside.” A typical promotional strategy is to emphasise the intangible benefits of cosmetic surgery, such as happiness or confidence. This is encapsulated in a 2011 print advert for Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group which shows a smiling young girl in a bikini holding a placard which reads, “I’ve just had my breasts done, but the biggest change you’ll see is on my face.” In promising happiness or self-confidence, intangible effects which are impossible to measure, marketers avoid the reality of surgery—where a cut is made, what is added or removed, how many stitches are required. Consumers know the world through shopping (Elliott 43), and marketers draw on this behaviour to associate surgery with any other purchase in the life of a successful consumer. Consumers are encouraged to choose from a gallery of looks, to “Browse through our Before and After Gallery for inspiration,” and the purchase is rendered more accessible through the use of discounts, offers, and incentives, which consumers are accustomed to seeing in familiar shopping contexts. Sales intent can be blatant, such as this appeal to disposable income on Realself.com: “Now that your 2015 taxes are (hopefully) filed and behind you, were you fortunate enough to get a refund? If it just so happens that the government will be returning some of your hard-earned cash, what will you be using it for? Electronic gadgets, an island vacation, a shopping spree . . . or plastic surgery?” Providers reduce perceived risk by implying that interventions such as facial fillers are considered normal practice for others, claiming that “Millions of women choose facial fillers, so that they can age exactly the way they want to” and by providing online interactive tools which consumers can use to manipulate facial features to see the potential effect of surgery (This-is-me.com).ConclusionThe aim of this article was to explore the tension between two different views of transformation, one which emphasised consumer autonomy, freedom, and market choice and the other which claims a more restrictive and manipulative influence of the market and its promotional practices. I argue that McCracken’s explanation of transformation as “the expression of consumer agency and individual freedom” (xvi) offers an overly optimistic view of consumer transformation. In the cosmetic surgery market, the expression of consumer autonomy and freedom rests on the discourse of choice. This same discourse is adopted by surgery providers in their persuasive strategies to secure new clients so that the market’s promotional language (e.g. a whole new you) becomes part of the consumer’s understanding of and articulation of cosmetic surgery transformation. I argue that marketing and promotion work to progress consumers along the path to surgery, by giving them reasons to do so. This is achieved by reflecting existing consumer anxieties as deficiencies, by creating new reasons for surgery by problematising normal conditions, by promising intangible benefits, and by normalising the purchase. These promotional practices also regulate and restrict consumers by presenting visual images of transformation which influence how others understand “the perfect you.” The gallery of looks on surgery websites constrains choice by signifying which looks are desirable, and “before and after” rhetoric emphasises the pivotal role of cosmetic surgery in achieving this transformation. ReferencesAizura, Aren. “Where Health and Beauty Meet: Femininity and Racialisation in Thai Cosmetic Surgery Clinics.” Asian Studies Review 33.3 (2009): 303–17.Bordo, Susan. “Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body.” 3 June 2016 <www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/Papers/Bordo>.———. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.Brennan, Ross, Lynn Eagle, and David Rice. “Medicalization and Marketing.” Journal of Macromarketing 30.1 (2010): 8–22.Davis, Kathy. “‘A Dubious Equality’: Men, Women and Cosmetic Surgery.” Body & Society 8.1 (2002): 49–65.———. 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