Cosmetic Tourism: Bodies and Identities Between New Opportunities and Unseen Risks

Unlike of what occurred in the industrial era, in the post-modern society the identity of the social actors is no longer linked only to the class, but it appears as the result of an individual choice. This process has been –and continues to be– favored by globalization, the growing free time, the spread and the multiplication of media and transportation tools, that offer possible new dimensions for the construction of self, that can be realized through the physical transformation too. This paper pretends to highlight how today even tourism can be an experience of identity construction. In particular, the contribution intends to describe a specific kind of tourism, the cosmetic one, whose aim is to combine the experience of traveling with the modification of the body which is a visible vehicle of identity. The purpose of the article is to show new opportunities –but also unseen risks– linked to this specific form of tourism.