Abigail Brooks on “Story in the Public Square”

Air Dates: October 20-21, 2017

Cosmetic surgery was a $16 billion industry in 2016. Abigail Brooks, says the explosive growth in cosmetic procedures is an outgrowth of deregulation in the healthcare industry, and it’s affecting the way we think about aging.

Abigail Brooks is the Assistant Professor of Sociology, and the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Providence College. A few of her many areas of expertise are sociology of gender, sociology of the body and age studies. In her book, The Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention, Brooks explores what it means to age in the United States.

“Story in the Public Square” airs on Rhode Island PBS in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. & 9:30 p.m. ET and Sundays at & 12:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124.

Story in the Public Square is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate, and tell stories that matter.