| Popis: |
Women’s heads and faces are the practitioner’s first target. Surgeon or beautician, with hair, nose, ears, lips, chin and jaw the plastic offensive begins. Jocelynne Scutt relates the importance of women’s hair through history, its impact in religious orders, romance and male attraction, and how not only colour, texture, length and thickness can be manufactured, but bad hair days can become long-lived nightmares. Are such outcomes compensable through legal action for negligence? If so, what is the level of damages? What of noses reshaped, ears pinned back, skin stretched taut over cheekbones chasing wrinkle elimination? The history of the facelift is a story in itself, going from outer skin manipulation, to subcutaneous fat and thence to bone structure, recognising that bone loss will impact on how well a woman’s cheeks hold up to ageing. As Jocelynne Scutt warns, a woman’s wish for a wondrously youthful outcome may not be met through surgery, but recompense through law requires a failure of surgical technique, not patient or client dissatisfaction. As for teeth, whitening and false crowns or veneers can make a smile translucent or lead to litigation with enamel stripped, gums diseased, and damages claimed. Receding jaws can be refashioned into defined curve, or too firm definition into gentle contour. Yet just as discontent may drive a woman into the clinic, salon or surgery, it can accompany her exit. Botoxed and botched lips figure highly in compensation claims, too, an original desire for a pleasantly puffed-up appearance generating displeasure at a puckered pout. But as Jocelynne Scutt explains, dissatisfaction is not the measure for determining negligence. In a courtroom, the failure of hair or beauty treatments or face-changing surgery to satisfy is immaterial. There, practitioners are adjudged on skill, not a woman’s woes. |
