Research
Smirnova, Michelle. 2023. The Prescription to Prison Pipeline: The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
In The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline Michelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing opioid drug epidemic is the result of an endless cycle in which suffering is medicalized and drug use is criminalized. Drawing on interviews with 80 incarcerated individuals in Missouri correctional institutions, Smirnova shows how contradictions in medical practices, social ideals, and legal policies disproportionately criminalize the poor for their social condition. This criminalization further exacerbates and perpetuates drug addiction and poverty. Tracing the processes by which social issues are constructed as biomedical ones that necessitate pharmacological intervention, Smirnova highlights how inequitable surveillance, policing, and punishment of marginalized populations intensifies harms associated with both treatment and punishment, especially given that the distinctions between the two have become blurred. By focusing on the stories of people whose pain and pharmaceutical treatment leads to incarceration, Smirnova challenges the binary of individual and social problems, effectively exploring how the conceptualization, diagnoses, and treatment of substance use may exacerbate outcomes such as relapse, recidivism, poverty, abuse, and death.
Grimes, Amanda and Michelle Smirnova. 2020. Perspectives on an Earn-a-Bike Intervention on Transportation, Health and Self- Esteem among Men Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Transport & Health. Homelessness continues to be a pervasive public health and social justice issue across the nation. Unfortunately, some of the greatest needs of those experiencing homelessness are not met through traditional resources and agencies, which tend to focus on immediate needs such as food and shelter. One pressing—and often unmet—need of people experiencing homelessness is transportation. Our findings suggest that men experiencing homelessness experience several positive impacts from owning a bicycle and value the independence they gained. Maintaining employment, strengthened social capital, improved health and access to health care services, and increased self-esteem emerged as important outcomes for men experiencing homelessness who are bike owners. For example, men reported being able to stop taking prescription medications and reduce illegal drug use because of their bike use. New unresolved challenges include bike theft, lack of secure parking, and storage.
Owens, Jennifer and Michelle Smirnova. 2019. Combatting Rx Drug Misuse: Women’s Proactive and Reactive Policy Recommendations. Criminal Justice Policy Review. Given the rapid increase in prescription (Rx) drug misuse, overdose, and drug-related arrests, the purpose of this study is to identify strategies to combat Rx misuse from the perspective of former Rx drug misusers who are presently incarcerated. Using semi-structured interviews, we elicited such recommendations from 33 incarcerated women in the Midwest with histories of Rx drug misuse. The policy recommendations put forth by the women tended to be proactive rather than reactive and focused upon more vigilant surveillance and prevention efforts by medical professionals. While there was little mention of the criminal justice system or incarceration, women did also advocate for better treatment and rehabilitation options. Users affected by Rx misuse suggested more proactive approaches in dealing with Rx misuse that would ultimately shift drug control responsibilities from law enforcement to doctors.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2018. Small Hands, Nasty Women, and Bad Hombres: Hegemonic Masculinity and Humor in the 2016 Presidential Election. Socius.
Given that the president is thought to be the national representative, political campaigns often reflect the efforts to define a national identity and collective values. These articulations are often tied to structures of power, even if the intention is to eventually dismantle them. Political humor provides a unique lens through which to explore how identity figures into national politics, given that the critique of an intended target is often made through cultural scripts that may inadvertently reify the very power structures it seeks to subvert. In conducting an analysis of 240 tweets, memes, and political cartoons from the 2016 U.S. presidential election that criticized the two frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we see how popular political humor often reaffirmed heteronormative assumptions of gender, sexuality, and race and equated scripts of hegemonic masculinity with presidential ability. In doing so, these discourses reified a patriarchal power structure.
Smirnova, Michelle and Jennifer Gatewood Owens. 2018. The New Mothers’ Little Helpers: Medicalization, Victimization, and Criminalization via Prescription Drug Use. Deviant Behavior.
In order to understand the relationship between nonmedical prescription drug use, gender, and crime, interviews were conducted with 40 incarcerated women who self-identified as nonmedical Rx users. Of the women we interviewed, seventy percent were prescribed Rx drugs from their doctors to aid in recovery from cesarean section childbirth deliveries, treat post-partum depression, or for other mental or physical health problems associated with childhood abuse and victimization. These women subsequently discovered that these pills also helped them cope with the stresses of caretaking and keeping the family together, particularly when experiencing intimate partner violence and prolonged poverty. Women were motivated to use Rx drugs in order to be a “good” mother, as defined by medical and cultural discourse; however, despite positive intentions, prolonged nonmedical use often hindered the realization of these ideals and ultimately resulted in their criminalization, incarceration, and separation from their children.
Owens, Jennifer Gatewood and Michelle Smirnova. 2018. It’s the Same, Only It’s Not: Perceptions of the Prescription Drug Market in Comparison With Other Illicit Drug Markets. Journal of Drug Issues.
Given the rapid rise of prescription (Rx) opioid overdoses in the United States, it is crucial to understand how people acquire Rx drugs. Prior research suggests individuals obtain Rx drugs through both legal and illegal channels, but there has been limited qualitative research focused upon the intersections between Rx drug markets and other drug markets. To understand the similarities and differences, we interviewed 40 incarcerated women about their experiences with both markets. Based upon these conversations, we find that few women received pills exclusively through doctors and 90% of them had used illicit markets or informal social networks to acquire Rx drugs. Although there is extensive overlap between the users, dealers, and operations between Rx and illicit drug markets, these women draw attention to how certain agents, processes, and social reactions differ in meaningful ways that are crucial to an effective public health response.
Smirnova, Michelle and Jennifer Gatewood Owens. 2017. Medicalized addiction, self-medication, or nonmedical prescription drug use? How trust figures into incarcerated women’s conceptualization of prescription drug use. Social Science & Medicine 183: 106-115.
Trust is crucial to optimal care. When trust is compromised, patients, doctors, and others involved in the provision of health care may not act in patients' best interests, particularly when dealing with prescription (Rx) drugs. Patients must trust that doctors are giving them the proper treatment, including access to Rx drugs only when medically necessary. They must also trust themselves to use these drugs properly. Likewise, doctors must trust the patient's ability to use medications appropriately. Given the recent rise in illicit Rx drug use in the U.S., we seek to understand how women articulate levels of trust in doctors and themselves and if different combinations of trust and distrust impact how they acquire, use, and articulate their experiences with Rx drugs. To this end, we identified and interviewed 40 women incarcerated in the U.S., who were deeply entrenched in illicit Rx drug use prior to prison. Based upon this research, we argue that illicit Rx drug use may be tied to different combinations of trust and distrust in individual doctors (interpersonal trust), the field of medicine (institutional trust), and the users themselves (self trust). How these women acquire Rx drugs: through doctors, friends, family, or the street market are influenced by combinations of interpersonal, institutional, and self trust.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2017. Authenticity as (Post-) Modern Ethics: An Analysis of the New York Times’ Ethicist Column. Journal of Sociology. In Press.
As (post-) modern institutions multiply and become more abstract and fractured in their ethical prescriptions, individuals must learn navigate ethical ambiguity on their own. One way that this appears to be accomplished is through the pursuit of ‘authenticity’ within and across specific contexts. Based on a sample of 600 letters published between 2002 and 2014, this article explores the New York Times’ Ethicist column as a site where individuals grapple with personal responsibility to engage in ethical behavior, often doing so in the name of authenticity. Instead of relying on external institutions, to dictate ethical choices, such ethical trade-offs become the bones of one’s identity. This can result in tension between within-context authenticity that is derived from specific roles and relationships and across-context authenticity that transcends people and places. This tension is a defining feature of ethical action in the (post-) modern era.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2017. Multiple Masculinities: Gender Performativity in Soviet Humor. Men & Masculinities 20(2): 204-229.
This article explores expressions of Russian masculinity in the Russian anekdot —a short humorous (and at times politically subversive) narrative that was highly popular during the late-Soviet era. Although anekdots challenged the legitimacy of Soviet power and highlighted inconsistencies between propaganda and reality, they utilize and therefore reinforce categories and concepts of the very social system they contest. In conducting a paired content and discourse analysis of 1,290 Soviet-era Russian anekdots, this article demonstrates how this genre both (1) reveals a crisis in Soviet-era Russian masculinity and (2) contributes to a hierarchy of cultural citizenship established through the definition of particular racial, national, and gendered groups as ‘‘other.’’ In doing so, the focus is not only on the objects of the jokes, individuals or groups that are scrutinized and ridiculed, but also on the subjects of the joke and the joke tellers themselves. This project demonstrates how Russian men are distinguished from Russian women as well as ethnic and national others through discourses of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.
Smirnova, Michelle and Paul Scanlon. 2017. Experience- and Cultural-Repertoire-Based Avenues of Trust: An Analysis of Public Trust in Statistical Agencies and their Data. Social Policy & Society. 16(2): 219-236.
Declining trust in statistical agencies has recently complicated the endeavour to collect high-quality, timely data that are used to inform US policy and practice. Given this context, understanding how respondents choose to trust particular statistical agencies and their products is incredibly important. This article details a series of cognitive
interviews (85) and focus groups (3) used to measure how the US public develops trust for statistical agencies, their statistical products and their use of administrative records. Results show that respondents use two models of trust in their rationale: experience based and cultural–repertoire based. When respondents did not have experience with a particular institution and/or its product, cultural values including personal liberty, cost savings and the promotion of social goods (for example, government-sponsored schools and hospitals) were found to influence their motivations to trust or distrust. As a result, appeals to cultural values may have the potential to increase trust among respondents. Familiarity with statistical agencies and their products may also increase respondents’
levels of trust.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2016. ‘I’m a cheerleader, but secretly I deal drugs’: Authenticity in the Disclosed and Undisclosed Self. Symbolic Interaction 39(1): 26–44.
Authenticity requires a balance between being true to others and being true to the self. People keep and disclose secrets in order to maintain authenticity contextually within relationships, as well as across contexts through self-reflexive evaluations. Based upon a content and discourse analysis of 1600 submissions to the PostSecret mail-art project, this study explores how secrets are used to manage disparate social, role, and personal identities to sustain coherent selves in some contexts and incoherent selves in others. Secrets are revealed anonymously through the PostSecret mail-art project, which allows for a cathartic release without disrupting their performances in front of significant others. This project analyzes the attempts made to maintain or achieve authenticity through the dialectical acts of concealment and disclosure.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2014. What is the Shortest Russian Joke? Communism. Russian Cultural Consciousness Expressed through Soviet Humor. Qualitative Sociology 37(3): 323-343.
In an environment like Soviet Russia where it was difficult, if not impossible, to make assertions that contradicted the official Communist Party word, political humor can be used to challenge, subvert, or uphold official “truths.” The Russian Soviet anekdot—a politically subversive joke—provides an intimate view into the perspective of the Russian people living under Soviet rule. The anekdot serves as a discourse of “cultural consciousness,” connecting otherwise atomized people to a homeland, collective culture, and memory. In conducting a paired content and critical discourse analysis of 1,290 anekdoty collected from Russian archives, I explore how this oral folklore served to construct a Russian collective consciousness that (1) resists Party rhetoric, social policy, and ideology, but also (2) adopts and reifies social boundaries established by Soviet discourse by constructing particular groups as “other.” Those who are familiar with cultural folklore—and the historical context to which it refers—are taught who are the perpetrators responsible for injustices, who are the victims, and how we should feel about these different people; folklore also gives insight into the perspectives of those from the hegemonic '"center."
Smirnova, Michelle. 2012. A Will to Youth: The Aging Woman’s Civic Duty. Social Science & Medicine 75(7):1236-1243.
The logic and cultural myths that buttress the cosmeceutical industry construct the older woman as a victim of old age, part of an “at-risk” population who must monitor, treat and prevent any markers of old age. A content and discourse analysis of 124 advertisements from the US More magazine between 1998 and 2008, revealed three major themes working together to produce this civic duty: (1) the inclusion of scientific and medical authorities in order to define the cosmeceutical as a ‘drug’ curing a disease, (2) descriptions of the similarities (and differences) between the abilities of cosmeceuticals and cosmetic surgery to restore one’s youth, and (3) the logic equating youth with beauty, femininity and power and older age with the absence of these qualities. Together these intersecting logics produce the “will to youth”dthe imperative of the aging woman to promote her youthful appearance by any and all available means. Further, by using images and references to fantasies and traditional fairytales, cosmeceutical advertisements both promise and normalize expectations of eternal youth of the aging woman.
In The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline Michelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing opioid drug epidemic is the result of an endless cycle in which suffering is medicalized and drug use is criminalized. Drawing on interviews with 80 incarcerated individuals in Missouri correctional institutions, Smirnova shows how contradictions in medical practices, social ideals, and legal policies disproportionately criminalize the poor for their social condition. This criminalization further exacerbates and perpetuates drug addiction and poverty. Tracing the processes by which social issues are constructed as biomedical ones that necessitate pharmacological intervention, Smirnova highlights how inequitable surveillance, policing, and punishment of marginalized populations intensifies harms associated with both treatment and punishment, especially given that the distinctions between the two have become blurred. By focusing on the stories of people whose pain and pharmaceutical treatment leads to incarceration, Smirnova challenges the binary of individual and social problems, effectively exploring how the conceptualization, diagnoses, and treatment of substance use may exacerbate outcomes such as relapse, recidivism, poverty, abuse, and death.
Grimes, Amanda and Michelle Smirnova. 2020. Perspectives on an Earn-a-Bike Intervention on Transportation, Health and Self- Esteem among Men Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Transport & Health. Homelessness continues to be a pervasive public health and social justice issue across the nation. Unfortunately, some of the greatest needs of those experiencing homelessness are not met through traditional resources and agencies, which tend to focus on immediate needs such as food and shelter. One pressing—and often unmet—need of people experiencing homelessness is transportation. Our findings suggest that men experiencing homelessness experience several positive impacts from owning a bicycle and value the independence they gained. Maintaining employment, strengthened social capital, improved health and access to health care services, and increased self-esteem emerged as important outcomes for men experiencing homelessness who are bike owners. For example, men reported being able to stop taking prescription medications and reduce illegal drug use because of their bike use. New unresolved challenges include bike theft, lack of secure parking, and storage.
- Featured by the Health Forward Foundation: https://healthforward.org/study-shows-bikes-are-a-lifeline-for-kc-men-experiencing-homelessness/
- Featured by BikeWalkKC: https://bikewalkkc.org/blog/2020/08/bikes-as-freedom-hope-faith-study/
Owens, Jennifer and Michelle Smirnova. 2019. Combatting Rx Drug Misuse: Women’s Proactive and Reactive Policy Recommendations. Criminal Justice Policy Review. Given the rapid increase in prescription (Rx) drug misuse, overdose, and drug-related arrests, the purpose of this study is to identify strategies to combat Rx misuse from the perspective of former Rx drug misusers who are presently incarcerated. Using semi-structured interviews, we elicited such recommendations from 33 incarcerated women in the Midwest with histories of Rx drug misuse. The policy recommendations put forth by the women tended to be proactive rather than reactive and focused upon more vigilant surveillance and prevention efforts by medical professionals. While there was little mention of the criminal justice system or incarceration, women did also advocate for better treatment and rehabilitation options. Users affected by Rx misuse suggested more proactive approaches in dealing with Rx misuse that would ultimately shift drug control responsibilities from law enforcement to doctors.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2018. Small Hands, Nasty Women, and Bad Hombres: Hegemonic Masculinity and Humor in the 2016 Presidential Election. Socius.
Given that the president is thought to be the national representative, political campaigns often reflect the efforts to define a national identity and collective values. These articulations are often tied to structures of power, even if the intention is to eventually dismantle them. Political humor provides a unique lens through which to explore how identity figures into national politics, given that the critique of an intended target is often made through cultural scripts that may inadvertently reify the very power structures it seeks to subvert. In conducting an analysis of 240 tweets, memes, and political cartoons from the 2016 U.S. presidential election that criticized the two frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we see how popular political humor often reaffirmed heteronormative assumptions of gender, sexuality, and race and equated scripts of hegemonic masculinity with presidential ability. In doing so, these discourses reified a patriarchal power structure.
Smirnova, Michelle and Jennifer Gatewood Owens. 2018. The New Mothers’ Little Helpers: Medicalization, Victimization, and Criminalization via Prescription Drug Use. Deviant Behavior.
In order to understand the relationship between nonmedical prescription drug use, gender, and crime, interviews were conducted with 40 incarcerated women who self-identified as nonmedical Rx users. Of the women we interviewed, seventy percent were prescribed Rx drugs from their doctors to aid in recovery from cesarean section childbirth deliveries, treat post-partum depression, or for other mental or physical health problems associated with childhood abuse and victimization. These women subsequently discovered that these pills also helped them cope with the stresses of caretaking and keeping the family together, particularly when experiencing intimate partner violence and prolonged poverty. Women were motivated to use Rx drugs in order to be a “good” mother, as defined by medical and cultural discourse; however, despite positive intentions, prolonged nonmedical use often hindered the realization of these ideals and ultimately resulted in their criminalization, incarceration, and separation from their children.
Owens, Jennifer Gatewood and Michelle Smirnova. 2018. It’s the Same, Only It’s Not: Perceptions of the Prescription Drug Market in Comparison With Other Illicit Drug Markets. Journal of Drug Issues.
Given the rapid rise of prescription (Rx) opioid overdoses in the United States, it is crucial to understand how people acquire Rx drugs. Prior research suggests individuals obtain Rx drugs through both legal and illegal channels, but there has been limited qualitative research focused upon the intersections between Rx drug markets and other drug markets. To understand the similarities and differences, we interviewed 40 incarcerated women about their experiences with both markets. Based upon these conversations, we find that few women received pills exclusively through doctors and 90% of them had used illicit markets or informal social networks to acquire Rx drugs. Although there is extensive overlap between the users, dealers, and operations between Rx and illicit drug markets, these women draw attention to how certain agents, processes, and social reactions differ in meaningful ways that are crucial to an effective public health response.
Smirnova, Michelle and Jennifer Gatewood Owens. 2017. Medicalized addiction, self-medication, or nonmedical prescription drug use? How trust figures into incarcerated women’s conceptualization of prescription drug use. Social Science & Medicine 183: 106-115.
Trust is crucial to optimal care. When trust is compromised, patients, doctors, and others involved in the provision of health care may not act in patients' best interests, particularly when dealing with prescription (Rx) drugs. Patients must trust that doctors are giving them the proper treatment, including access to Rx drugs only when medically necessary. They must also trust themselves to use these drugs properly. Likewise, doctors must trust the patient's ability to use medications appropriately. Given the recent rise in illicit Rx drug use in the U.S., we seek to understand how women articulate levels of trust in doctors and themselves and if different combinations of trust and distrust impact how they acquire, use, and articulate their experiences with Rx drugs. To this end, we identified and interviewed 40 women incarcerated in the U.S., who were deeply entrenched in illicit Rx drug use prior to prison. Based upon this research, we argue that illicit Rx drug use may be tied to different combinations of trust and distrust in individual doctors (interpersonal trust), the field of medicine (institutional trust), and the users themselves (self trust). How these women acquire Rx drugs: through doctors, friends, family, or the street market are influenced by combinations of interpersonal, institutional, and self trust.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2017. Authenticity as (Post-) Modern Ethics: An Analysis of the New York Times’ Ethicist Column. Journal of Sociology. In Press.
As (post-) modern institutions multiply and become more abstract and fractured in their ethical prescriptions, individuals must learn navigate ethical ambiguity on their own. One way that this appears to be accomplished is through the pursuit of ‘authenticity’ within and across specific contexts. Based on a sample of 600 letters published between 2002 and 2014, this article explores the New York Times’ Ethicist column as a site where individuals grapple with personal responsibility to engage in ethical behavior, often doing so in the name of authenticity. Instead of relying on external institutions, to dictate ethical choices, such ethical trade-offs become the bones of one’s identity. This can result in tension between within-context authenticity that is derived from specific roles and relationships and across-context authenticity that transcends people and places. This tension is a defining feature of ethical action in the (post-) modern era.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2017. Multiple Masculinities: Gender Performativity in Soviet Humor. Men & Masculinities 20(2): 204-229.
This article explores expressions of Russian masculinity in the Russian anekdot —a short humorous (and at times politically subversive) narrative that was highly popular during the late-Soviet era. Although anekdots challenged the legitimacy of Soviet power and highlighted inconsistencies between propaganda and reality, they utilize and therefore reinforce categories and concepts of the very social system they contest. In conducting a paired content and discourse analysis of 1,290 Soviet-era Russian anekdots, this article demonstrates how this genre both (1) reveals a crisis in Soviet-era Russian masculinity and (2) contributes to a hierarchy of cultural citizenship established through the definition of particular racial, national, and gendered groups as ‘‘other.’’ In doing so, the focus is not only on the objects of the jokes, individuals or groups that are scrutinized and ridiculed, but also on the subjects of the joke and the joke tellers themselves. This project demonstrates how Russian men are distinguished from Russian women as well as ethnic and national others through discourses of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.
Smirnova, Michelle and Paul Scanlon. 2017. Experience- and Cultural-Repertoire-Based Avenues of Trust: An Analysis of Public Trust in Statistical Agencies and their Data. Social Policy & Society. 16(2): 219-236.
Declining trust in statistical agencies has recently complicated the endeavour to collect high-quality, timely data that are used to inform US policy and practice. Given this context, understanding how respondents choose to trust particular statistical agencies and their products is incredibly important. This article details a series of cognitive
interviews (85) and focus groups (3) used to measure how the US public develops trust for statistical agencies, their statistical products and their use of administrative records. Results show that respondents use two models of trust in their rationale: experience based and cultural–repertoire based. When respondents did not have experience with a particular institution and/or its product, cultural values including personal liberty, cost savings and the promotion of social goods (for example, government-sponsored schools and hospitals) were found to influence their motivations to trust or distrust. As a result, appeals to cultural values may have the potential to increase trust among respondents. Familiarity with statistical agencies and their products may also increase respondents’
levels of trust.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2016. ‘I’m a cheerleader, but secretly I deal drugs’: Authenticity in the Disclosed and Undisclosed Self. Symbolic Interaction 39(1): 26–44.
Authenticity requires a balance between being true to others and being true to the self. People keep and disclose secrets in order to maintain authenticity contextually within relationships, as well as across contexts through self-reflexive evaluations. Based upon a content and discourse analysis of 1600 submissions to the PostSecret mail-art project, this study explores how secrets are used to manage disparate social, role, and personal identities to sustain coherent selves in some contexts and incoherent selves in others. Secrets are revealed anonymously through the PostSecret mail-art project, which allows for a cathartic release without disrupting their performances in front of significant others. This project analyzes the attempts made to maintain or achieve authenticity through the dialectical acts of concealment and disclosure.
Smirnova, Michelle. 2014. What is the Shortest Russian Joke? Communism. Russian Cultural Consciousness Expressed through Soviet Humor. Qualitative Sociology 37(3): 323-343.
In an environment like Soviet Russia where it was difficult, if not impossible, to make assertions that contradicted the official Communist Party word, political humor can be used to challenge, subvert, or uphold official “truths.” The Russian Soviet anekdot—a politically subversive joke—provides an intimate view into the perspective of the Russian people living under Soviet rule. The anekdot serves as a discourse of “cultural consciousness,” connecting otherwise atomized people to a homeland, collective culture, and memory. In conducting a paired content and critical discourse analysis of 1,290 anekdoty collected from Russian archives, I explore how this oral folklore served to construct a Russian collective consciousness that (1) resists Party rhetoric, social policy, and ideology, but also (2) adopts and reifies social boundaries established by Soviet discourse by constructing particular groups as “other.” Those who are familiar with cultural folklore—and the historical context to which it refers—are taught who are the perpetrators responsible for injustices, who are the victims, and how we should feel about these different people; folklore also gives insight into the perspectives of those from the hegemonic '"center."
Smirnova, Michelle. 2012. A Will to Youth: The Aging Woman’s Civic Duty. Social Science & Medicine 75(7):1236-1243.
The logic and cultural myths that buttress the cosmeceutical industry construct the older woman as a victim of old age, part of an “at-risk” population who must monitor, treat and prevent any markers of old age. A content and discourse analysis of 124 advertisements from the US More magazine between 1998 and 2008, revealed three major themes working together to produce this civic duty: (1) the inclusion of scientific and medical authorities in order to define the cosmeceutical as a ‘drug’ curing a disease, (2) descriptions of the similarities (and differences) between the abilities of cosmeceuticals and cosmetic surgery to restore one’s youth, and (3) the logic equating youth with beauty, femininity and power and older age with the absence of these qualities. Together these intersecting logics produce the “will to youth”dthe imperative of the aging woman to promote her youthful appearance by any and all available means. Further, by using images and references to fantasies and traditional fairytales, cosmeceutical advertisements both promise and normalize expectations of eternal youth of the aging woman.
