UNDER THE FANTASTICAL KNIFE by Lucy McLaughlin

32THE FANTAS UNDER TICAL KNIFEWORDS:Lucy McLaughlin (she/her) ART:Yana Dzhakupova (she/her) In the past half-decade, the body’s reality as a malleable surface has been brought to the foreground through the myriad of corporeal alterations advertised to us. Plastic surgery now ranges from getting filler at your local Superdrug, to the installation of permanent elf ears. The boundaries of what is possible under the knife broadens every day. Describing themselves as an ‘International Plastic Surgery Model’ and ‘Future fantasy being’, Luis Padron (@luispadron.elf) exemplifies this new trend in plastic surgery, which sees a shift from the ‘ideal’ to the fictional. Padron, who looks like an elf and who is currently waiting on their facial implants, acts as a visual representation of fantasy as a site of non-fiction. The questions then arise, why is this shift occurring and what are its implications?

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Inrefashioningourfacestorefectafctionalreality,

w e d i While plastic surgery once functioned to overcome any bodily ‘defects’ or undesirable shoots and branches, it is now often used to champion a realm of aesthetics which goes beyond human perfection. In the case of the fantastic body altered by plastic surgery, the body becomes the surface upon which the worlds of reality and fantasy collide. However, people don’t always react positively to figures like Padron, and perhaps this is because when creaturely morphing takes place, our image of the ‘human’ becomes muddied. In refashioning our faces to reflect a fictional reality, we dismantle the concept of being ‘human’ and instead create a ‘post-human’ aesthetic. Those who aren’t ready to progress into this visual reality will be resistant, and those who want to move past the idealised beauty standards of the s m a n t l e t h e day will rejoice. Though Padron moves towards the elf aesthetic, there are a plethora of other bodies transforming into other creatures. Anastasiya Shpagina (@anastasiya_fukkacumi) provides an alternate example of the unreal creature as she fashions herself as a doll – veering more towards the c o n c e visual realm of toys, rather than sci-fi or fantasy. As with any female-presenting body, the feminine ‘doll’ aesthetic has a distinctly youthful quality to it which, unfortunately, always risks fetishization and misogyny. With her enlarged doll eyes and plastic appearing skin, Shpagina is undoubtedly one of the p t o f closest things we have to an anime character come-to-life. By transforming her facial features with both surgery and skilful makeup strategies (a parallel, temporary form of body alteration), Shpagina’s face becomes something other, something which normative society is not used to, someone people may b e i n react with hostility to. g ‘ the current rise of nihilism, in tandem with academic postmodern thought, has resulted in the disavowal of outdated labels, binaries and divisions as markers of a ‘true’ reality h u m a n ’ a n d i n Reactions, implications, and controversies of this post-human movement aside, it is important to also ask why figures like Padron and Shpagina choose to alter their surface appearance in favour of the fantastical in the first place. Is this turn to unreality a form of aesthetic escapism? Perhaps, and here’s why: the current rise of nihilism, in tandem with academic postmodern thought, has resulted in the disavowal of outdated labels, binaries and divisions as markers of a ‘true’ reality. Those who make the aesthetic fantasy their reality, such as Padron and Shpagina, embrace this nihilism, move into a post-human future, and roll with the hyperreal punches. They embrace the anarchy of a post-human existence through plastic surgery, transcending those who wish to defend more traditional markers of a s t e a d c r e a t e stable reality. a Despite the positive view provided of those who lean into the post-human aesthetic, bleaker readings can be found if we poke our noses further into Instagram. For example, within the platform can be found a community of ‘Instagram dolls’ who name their plastic personas after their surgeon, thereby filling the role of a walking, talking, visual advertisement for their services. On their pages, there are a ‘ p o s t plethora of squares which detail desired shapes and provide a catalogue for future dolls to window shop procedures. The bodies of the dolls therefore oscillate tensely between images of empowerment and images of a potential capitalist transaction; in other words, they become objectified. Therefore like more traditional plastic surgery bodily ‘ideals’, post-human plastics also fail, in some regards, to provide a truly radical form of ‘post-human’ empowerment, one that is not co-opted into the modern system of h u m a n ’ capitalism or power, and its unachievable standards. That being noted, it is fair to say that using plastic surgery to achieve a more fantastical art form definitely strays from the more idealistic, contemporary ‘baddie’ aesthetic that plastic surgery is typically utilised for. Especially at this post-human extremity, plastic surgery serves to connect the corporeal with the ideological, and to amalgamate reality with fantasy. In an era in which bodily autonomy is becoming increasingly celebrated, which end of the spectrum will you choose? a e s t h e t i c