Cosmetic Surgery as a Strategy for Preventing Marital Infidelity: A Paradigm Model

Abstract

Objective: The present study aimed to understand cosmetic surgery as a strategy for preventing marital infidelity and to develop a paradigm model explaining this phenomenon.

Materials and Methods: This study employed a qualitative methodology using a grounded theory strategy. Participants were married women residing in Isfahan who had undergone at least one cosmetic surgery motivated by concerns related to their marital relationships. Participants were initially selected through purposive sampling and subsequently, as the analysis progressed, through theoretical sampling assisted by snowball recruitment. Data collection was ultimately completed with 16 women after theoretical saturation had been achieved across all six dimensions of the paradigm model. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Following audio recording and verbatim transcription, the interviews were analyzed concurrently with data collection using the constant comparative method in MAXQDA. Analysis involved three stages of open, axial, and selective coding, accompanied by analytic memo writing.

Findings: Data analysis resulted in the identification of six principal dimensions of the paradigm model. Causal conditions comprised three interconnected layers: marital and relational motivations, individual and psychological motivations, and social and cultural motivations. Contextual conditions included media and social-media pressures, the metropolitan social atmosphere, and the exhausting nature of women’s occupations. Intervening conditions were classified into facilitators—financial independence, spousal support, and access to informational networks—and inhibitors, including the husband’s refusal to provide financial support, fear of judgment, and involvement in maternal responsibilities. Strategies included concealment tactics, retaliatory and economic strategies, unsuccessful alternative strategies, and the conscious endurance of suffering. Consequences were identified at three levels: individual consequences, including regret over previous sacrifices, temporary restoration of self-confidence, entrapment in a continuous cycle of bodily repair, and the commodification of the self; marital consequences, including the predominance of appearance-based criteria over personality-related values, reversal of the power equation, and the conditionalization of love; and social consequences, including membership in an informal “club” of women who had undergone cosmetic procedures and the reproduction of appearance-related pressure. The study’s core category was formulated as “aggressive body management as a survival strategy within the insecure field of marital and social life.”

Conclusion: By proposing a context-sensitive model, this study contextualizes mate-retention theory within Iranian culture and demonstrates that mate-retention strategies in this context are deliberate, calculated, and deeply shaped by media discourses and family-based norms.