Reshaping the pillow angel: Plastic bodies and the rhetoric of normal surgical solutions

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 95, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 20-42

  Jordan, John W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

Author keywords

Body rhetoric; Health; Medicine; Normal; Plastic surgery

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449221884     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: 14795779     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630802621060     Document Type: Article

References (110)

1. Daniel F. Gunther and Douglas S. Diekema, "Attenuating Growth in Children with Profound Developmental Disability," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 160 (2006): 1013-17.
2. By comparison, the National Center for Health Statistics lists the average height and weight of adult American females as being five feet, four inches and 157 pounds. Margaret A. McDowell et al., "Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: U.S. Population, 1999-2002," Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics 361 (2005): 1-32. I use the statistics for non-Hispanic white females, as Ashley is described by Gunther and Diekema as a "white female." See Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1014.
3. Rebecca Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel," Salon.com, February 9, 2007, http:// www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/09/pillow-angel/ index.html/.
4. Jeffrey P. Brosco and Chris Feudtner, "Growth Attenuation: A Diminutive Solution to a Daunting Problem," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 160 (2006): 1077-78.
5. Amy Burkholder, "Disabled Girl's Parents Defend Growth-Stunting Treatment," CNN. com, March 12, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/ health/conditions/03/12/pillow.angel/ index.html/.
6. Nancy Gibbs, "Pillow Angel Ethics," Time, January 22, 2007, 56.
7. My textual archive consists of medical journals, television news transcripts, popular press articles and editorials, the parents' blog, and Internet searches on the key terms of the case conducted over several months. These were assembled into a critical text of the Ashley case. See Rayme E. McKerrow, "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis," Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 101.
8. Lisa Keränen, "Mapping Misconduct: Demarcating Legitimate Science from 'Fraud' in the B-06 Lumpectomy Controversy," Argumentation and Advocacy 42 (2005): 95.
9. Keränen, "Mapping Misconduct," 97. See also Arthur Caplan, "Is 'Peter Pan' Treatment a Moral Choice?" MSNBC.com, January 5, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16472931/
10. Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1014; Virgina Zantow, '"Pillow Angel' Raises Questions of Ethics, Medicine, Love," Iowa State Daily, January 18, 2007, http://media.
11. www.iowastatedaily.com/media/storage/paper818/news/2007/01/18/news/ pillow.angel.raises. questions.of.ethics.medicine.love-2652228.shtml/.
12. Bernice L. Hausman, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 66.
13. On the history of medical perspectives on the body and its plasticity see Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception (1973; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1994)
14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison(1977; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 135-94
15. Tony Hunt, The Medieval Surgery (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1992)
16. Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 47-129
17. Elizabeth Haiken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
18. For a discussion of how surgeons and bio-ethicists view surgical decisions regarding disabled children see Erik Parens, ed., Surgically Shaping Children: Technology, Ethics, and the Pursuit of Normality (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). These essays, several of which I cite below, presume that the goal of surgery is to bring a body into line with medical normalcy, and that the patient and/or primary caregiver has been apprised of the surgical risks and goals; in other words, the presumption is that the patient desires to be made "normal" according to the strictures of traditionally held medical views on the body.
19. Jeffrey L. Marsh, "To Cut or Not to Cut? A Surgeon's Perspective on Surgically Shaping Children," in Surgically Shaping Children, 113.
20. Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
21. See also Michael J. Hyde and Sarah McSpiritt, "Coming to Terms with Perfection: The Case of Terri Schiavo," Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (2007): 152-53.
22. Pippa Brush, "Metaphors of Inscription: Discipline, Plasticity and the Rhetoric of Choice," Feminist Review 58 (1998): 29.
23. Geoff Adams-Spink, "Ashley-The Disability Perspective," BBCNews.co.uk, January 5, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/ 1/hi/health/6234601 .stm/.
24. Edward Schiappa, Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 169.
25. Margrit Shildrick, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (London: Sage Publications, 2002), 68.
26. Brush, "Metaphors of Inscription," 25.
27. Hausman, Changing Sex, 49.
28. See Josh Boyd, "Public and Technical Interdependence: Regulatory Controversy, Out-Law Discourse, and the Messy Case of Olestra," Argumentation and Advocacy 39 (2002): 91-109
29. Michael J. Hyde, "Defining 'Human Dignity' in the Debate over the (Im)Morality of Physician-Assisted Suicide," Journal of Medical Humanities 22 (2001): 69-82
30. Keränen, "Mapping Misconduct"; John Lyne, "Bio-Rhetorics: Moralizing the Life Sciences," in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 35-57
31. Judy Z. Segal, Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005).
32. Hausman, Changing Sex, 14.
33. Brush, "Metaphors of Inscription," 31. See also Erik Parens, "Thinking about Surgically Shaping Children," in Surgically Shaping Children, xiii-xxx.
34. Marsh, "To Cut or Not," 116.
35. See also Richard J. Crockett, Thomas Pruzinsky, and John A. Persing, "The Influence of Plastic Surgery 'Reality TV' on Cosmetic Surgery Patient Expectations and Decision Making," Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 120 (2007): 316-24
36. Rosalind Gill, Karen Henwood, and Carl McLean, "Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative Masculinity," Body and Society 11 (2005): 37-62
37. Segal, Health and the Rhetoric, 25.
38. The treatments given to "tall girls" in the 1960s and 1970s to halt their growth and make them more "normal" were cited in the Ashley X commentary as an example of how parents and physicians are willing to substitute social norms for medical norms without fully comprehending the implications. Joyce M. Lee and Joel D. Howell, "Tall Girls: The Social Shaping of a Medical Therapy," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 160 (2006): 1035-39.
39. John W. Jordan, "The Rhetorical Limits of the 'Plastic Body'," Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 328.
40. For a discussion of "wrong body" rhetoric, see Jordan, "Rhetorical Limits," 339-41.
41. See Anne Balsamo, "On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body," Camera Ohscura 28 (1993): 207-37
42. Virginia L. Blum, Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
43. Susan Bordo, '"Material Girl': The Effacements of Postmodern Culture," Michigan Quarterly Review 29 (1990): 653-77
44. Debra L. Gimlin, Body Work: Beauty and Self Image in American Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
45. Kathryn Pauly Morgan, "Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women's Bodies," Hypatia 6 (1991): 25-53
46. Carole Spitzack, "The Confession Mirror: Plastic Images for Surgery," Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 13 (1988): 38-50
47. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1991).
48. References to the parents' blog all relate to "The 'Ashley Treatment': Towards a Better Quality of Life for 'Pillow Angels'," comment posted January 2, 2007, http://ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com/.
49. Hilde Lindermann, "The Power of Parents and the Agency of Children," in Surgically Shaping Children, 182, 178.
50. '"Ashley Treatment'."
51. Amy Burkholder, "Ethicist in Ashley Case Answers Questions," CNN.com, January 11, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/health/01/11/ashley. ethicist/index.html/.
52. Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1016.
53. Burkholder, "Ethicist Answers."
54. Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1016.
55. Burkholder, "Ethicist Answers."
56. Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1015.
57. "Larry King Live," CNN, transcript from January 12, 2007, http://transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0701/12/lkl.01.html/.
58. Caroline Davies, "I Want My Girl to Have the 'Ashley Treatment'," The Daily Telegraph, January 8, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml =/news/2007/01/06/ nashley06.xml/. See also Kym Ng, "Growing Pains," Singapore Straits Times, February 7, 2007.
59. Burkholder, "Ethicist Answers."
60. Arthur W. Frank, "Emily's Scars: Surgical Shapings, Technoluxe, and Bioethics," in Surgically Shaping Children, 68.
61. "Treatment Keeps Girl Child-Sized," BBCNews.co.uk, January 4, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/americas/6229799.stm/. See also Michelle Miller, '"Ashley Treatment' Questioned by Parents," CBSNews.com, January 6, 2007, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/06/ eve-ningnews/main2335079.shtml/.
62. Lindsey Tanner, "Surgery on Girl Raises Ethical Questions," Washington Post, January 4, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2007/01/04/ar2007010401060.html/.
63. Caplan, "Peter Pan Treatment." See also "Paula Zahn Now," CNN.com, January 8, 2007, http://transcripts.cnn.com/ transcripts/070l/08/pzn.01.html/.
64. Brosco and Feudtner, "Growth Attenuation," 1078.
65. Margaret Somerville, "The Story of Ashley: Hard Case, Bad Ethics," Globe and Mail (Canada), February 7, 2007; William Saletan, "Arresting Development," Washington Post, January 21, 2007.
66. Melissa P. McNamara, '"Pillow Angel' Sparks Online Debate," CBSNews.com, January 10, 2007, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/09/ blogophile/main2340418.shtml/. See also Cherie Black, "Controversy Rages Around Stunting Girl's Growth," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 5, 2007.
67. McNamara, '"Pillow Angel'."
68. Joseph M. Valenzano et al., "When the Slippery Slope Becomes a Mudslide," The Exceptional Parent 37 (2007): 4.
69. "What Is Best for Ashley X?" Ontario Pembroke Observer, January 8, 2007.
70. Macon Morehouse, "Girl, Interrupted," People, January 22, 2007, 70
71. Ed Pilkington, quot;Frozen in Time," Guardian, January 4, 2007.
72. See also Sam Howe Verhovek, "Parents Defend Decision to Keep Disabled Girl Small," Los Angeles Times, January 3, 2007.
73. Joni Tada, "Larry King Live." Helen Henderson, '"Pillow Angel' Treatment Dehumanizing," Toronto Star, January 13, 2007.
74. See also Elizabeth Cohen, "Disability Community Decries 'Ashley Treatment'," CNN.com, January 12, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/ health/01/11/ashley.outcry/index.html; Gibbs, "Pillow Angel Ethics," 57
75. Carole Marcus, "Only Half the Story," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161 (2007): 616
76. André Picard, "It's Wrong to Keep Disabled Girl as an 'Angel'," Globe and Mail (Canada), January 11, 2007
77. Hank Bersani, "Growth Attenuation: Unjustifiable Non-Therapy," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161 (2007): 521.
78. Jeremy Laurance and Louise Jack, "Parents Who Froze Girl in Time Defend Their Actions," Independent, January 5, 2007.
79. See also Ian Haysom, '"Pillow Angel's' Parents Made the Right Choice," Victoria Times Colonist, January 6, 2007.
80. Bersani, "Growth Attenuation," 521.
81. Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel."
82. Tada, "Larry King Live."
83. My use of the term "non-disabled" here follows from disability rights advocates who use the phrase as the counterpart to their proud identification as "disabled" to reclaim the marker from derogatory meaning. See Nicola Hutchinson, "Disabling Beliefs? Impaired Embodiment in the Religious Tradition of the West," Body and Society 12 (2006): 3; Margaret Somerville, "Story of Ashley."
84. Ethan B. Ellis, "Disabling Children with Disabilities," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161 (2007): 419.
85. "The 'Ashley Treatment'." Ashley's parents later claimed on their blog that they "cited the non-sexualization as a side benefit" of removing Ashley's breast buds, but this was not entirely convincing as it was listed with the cancer-prevention and comfort reasons, and no mention was made of how and if the list was prioritized.
86. See Cohen, "Disability Community"; Lindsey Tanner, "Activists Protest Girl's Stunting," Washington Post, January 11, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2007/01/1 l/ar2007011100993.html/.
87. Jessica Marshall and Linda Geddes, "Operating in Whose Interest?" New Scientist, January 13, 2007, 6. See also Gibbs, "Pillow Angel Ethics," 57.
88. Jim Ritter, "Forever a Little Girl ... Destined to Grow Up," Chicago Sun-Times, January 12, 2007
89. Tom Shakespeare, "Unnecessary Work That Could Set a Dangerous Precedent," Times, January 5, 2007.
90. See Lee and Howell, "Tall Girls"; Louise Woodstock, "Skin Deep, Soul Deep: Mass Mediating Cosmetic Surgery in Popular Magazines, 1968-1998," Communication Review 4 (2001): 422-23.
91. Cohen, "Disability Community."
92. Christopher Mims, "The Pillow Angel Case-Three Bioethicists Weigh In," Scientific American, January 5, 2007, http://www,sciam.com/ article.cfm?articleid=r41e496c-e7f2-99df-33e40a7c8187563candsc=I100322/; "Treatment of 'Pillow Angel' Reflects Difficult Decisions," Spokane Spokesman-Review, January 21, 2007.
93. Zantow, '"Pillow Angel' Raises Questions." See also "Editor's Note," AAP Grand Rounds 17 (2007): 3.
94. "Larry King Live."
95. Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel." See also David Fisher, "Growth Attenuation Press Conference: Statement from Children's Hospital Medical Director, Dr. David Fisher," May 8, 2007, http://www. seattlechildrens.org/home/about-childrens/press-releases/2007/05/002039.asp/; Gunther and Diekema, "Attenuating Growth," 1014.
96. Amy Burkholder, "Disabled Girl's Parents Defend Growth-Stunting Treatment," CNN. com, March 12, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/ health/conditions/03/12/pillow.angel/index.html/.
97. Lindermann, "Power of Parents," 176.
98. "Larry King Live."
99. Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel."
100. Anne McDonald, "The Other Story from a 'Pillow Angel'," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 17, 2007.
101. Zantow, "'Pillow Angel' Raises Questions."
102. See McDonald, "The Other Story"; Ritter, "Forever a Little Girl"; Tanner, quot;Activists Protest."
103. See Henderson, '"Pillow Angel' Treatment Dehumanizing"; "Paula Zahn Now."
104. Valenzano et al., "When the Slippery Slope," 4; Sarah E. Shannon and Teresa A. Savage, "The Ashley Treatment: Two Viewpoints," Pediatric Nursing 33 (2007): 177.
105. '"Pillow Angel' Parents Answer CNN's Questions," CNN.com, March 12, 2008, http:// www.cnn.com/2008/health/conditions/03/ 12/pillow.qa/index.html/.
106. '"Ashley Treatment'."
107. Davies, "I Want My Girl." See also "Parental Plight," People, February 12, 2007, 8.
108. Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel." See also Daniel F. Gunther and Douglas S. Diekema, "In Reply," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161 (2007): 521.
109. Fisher, "Growth Attenuation Press Conference."
110. The publicity, however, has generated interest in the procedure among other parents. Ashley's hospital has received at least three additional requests from parents seeking the Ashley Treatment, and there are reports of similar requests at other hospitals worldwide. See Clarren, "Behind the Pillow Angel"; Davies, "I Want My Girl."