Women’s Tendency towards Cosmetic Surgery as Social Acceptability: Displaying Objective Welfare

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between social body acceptance and cultural capital and the tendency towards cosmetic surgery. The study was conducted through a survey, and the population included all the 15-54-year-old women living in Malayer in 2016. The sample size estimated through the Cochran formula was 656, and the sample was selected by simple random and multiphase cluster sampling method. The descriptive results showed that women had a high tendency towards cosmetic surgery (46.5). At the medium level, they posessed cultural capital (37.63), and on the average to upward level (39.7), they desired to be accepted. The regression results showed that from among the independent variables, the dimensions of cultural capital (i.e., objectified, embodied, and institutionalized) and social body acceptance (i.e., general, organizational, and peer), objectified capital (B= 0.51), general social acceptance (B= 0.49), institutionalized cultural capital (B= 0.26), and peer acceptance (B= 0.22) had the highest share in explaining the dependent variable. Furthermore, the prediction equation of the degree of women’s tendency towards cosmetic surgery could explain 58.1% of  the variance of  the dependent variable. The results also showed that the most common reasons for cosmetic surgery included manifested consumption, objective well-being, and social acceptance.