Professor Tanya Sheehan’s lecture was particularly engaging because of its relevance to pop culture.  She discussed the way that academic art principles were at work in the way that we understand reality TV and mass media, and she even included a portion where people used their iphones, which added to the point she was making about the excessive accessibility of plastic surgery.  This type of passive body amendment, visual plastic surgery, or photoshop, is pervasive in our culture.  The rise of social media, and the body as a performance has created an immense need for people to both blend in and stand out all at once.  This idea of passivity in the way that plastic surgery is sold is fascinating.  First, there are the ways that plastic surgery can be used in the virtual realm, such as apps and photo editing software.  But even with the shows that Professor Sheehan shared, the women are not their own agents of change in the plastic surgery that they go through.  They undergo a procedure that someone else determines, and someone else performs on them.  They are just a blank canvass on which societal expectations for beauty play out.  What does this mean for the way that mass media teaches us about our bodies?  Are our bodies not even truly our own?