Silicones Beneath the Surface

This chapter complicates the problematic, unreferenced, and frequently repeated Japanese origin myth of silicone bust augmentation injections. Silicone was racialized and othered by various actors, such as licensed American medical practitioners and journalists, as something distasteful that was pursued by Japanese female sex workers. These Orientalist narratives are contextualized within Japanese-US relations and the wider discourse of postwar American politics and popular culture. Using archival materials, including the papers of American plastic surgeons and Japanese medical research on silicone, the chapter challenges the established American-centric racialized narrative of the development of silicone. It maps postwar international networks of petrochemical companies and surgeons to show how these power relations affected the shaping of postwar American racialized gender ideals.