Heyes’s underlying point in the article on ethnic cosmetic surgery is that “feminist analysis of cosmetic surgery badly needs to learn the lessons of critical whiteness studies that are already widely integrated into feminist work on other topics.” She continues, “these lessons might direct us to investigate how cosmetic surgery enables white women to appropriate pieces of “ethnic” physicality for their exoticism and eroticism, without risking the oppression that more bodies are marked vulnerable to.”
I guess it is fair to say, according to the quotes, that Heyes sees ethnic cosmetic surgery negatively unless she was being sarcastic to the scholars, mentioned in the article. If we assumed that she was not being sarcastic, I’d say, however, that we can be positive about, put it in their words, white women appropriating “pieces of ‘ethnic’ physicality” of ethnic people and ethnic women “whitenizing” themselves. Let’s say more and more individuals were pursuing this unnatural transformation of appearance through cosmetic surgery. Then, they would be categorized out of categorically exclusive ethnic cultures because they would not be ethnically natural in appearance. This could undermine rigid institutions of traditionalism and ethnic fundamentalism. It seems as if, to some extent, the newly transformed could break away and free themselves from social, cultural, and ethnic features, which are often used to discriminate against in reality. Therefore, it may be a transformation of collectively identified individuals into non-traditional, non-cultural, and non-ethnic individual beings; that is, in my opinion, positive.
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