Facial 'character' noses out plastic surgery

This writer, who has considered rhinoplasty, will leave her visage just the way it is, thank you very much.

By Laura Reiley, Times Staff Writer
Published January 5, 2008

In the last, lumbering days of pregnancy you play a game. It passes the time. It's called What I Wish for My Progeny. Health, happiness, agility, whatever. Your significant other may surprise you. While you say "President of the United States" (because world domination sounds like overreaching), he/she says, "I want her to have a deep sense of empathy."

I wished for brains and brawn, but not exactly beauty. I wished for my daughter to be pretty enough. Pretty enough to move seamlessly in the world, pretty enough to have doors open to her. But not so pretty that it crowded out other things, obviating the need to shine brightly in other ways. Even more specifically, I wanted her to be pretty in a distinctive, even idiosyncratic way. I wished for her to look different, to stand out in a pack.

Despite the country's rush to plastic surgery, as a culture we've always valued attractiveness that's unique or garnished with an inimitable "flaw." Lauren Hutton's gap teeth, Cindy Crawford's mole, even Frida Kahlo's eyebrows. In all these cases, perfection would be a step backward, a move toward blandness.

I have thought a bit about what High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale might have been weighing when she chose to have bit of her nose lopped off in late November, setting off a media frenzy.

You see, I have a big schnoz. It precedes me into a room. You've heard the jokes. Steve Martin's "nose slam" in Roxanne was written specifically for me ("Everybody take cover, it's gonna blow."). But on a good day, I look in the mirror and see "character," not Cyrano de Bergerac.

Still, I've battled my whole life with whether to abbreviate it. At age 11, my grandmother took me aside and delicately offered to "take care of it." The only time she has ever sounded the least bit Mafioso, I nonetheless declined. I may do it yet, once gravity and the unkindnesses of middle age have set in in earnest. But I look to my big-nosed brethren - Anjelica Huston, Barbra Streisand, heck Uma and Gwyneth don't have bitty beaks, either - and I draw strength.

For Jennifer Grey, Ashley Tisdale and, um, Michael Jackson, what's done is done. But for my daughter and the countless other young girls who might have that one feature that troubles them in the mirror, surely there are more satisfying paths to love, fame and fortune than through looking like everyone else?

Laura Reiley is the St. Petersburg Times' restaurant critic, so although we'd like you to be able to judge her nose for yourself, she must remain incognito.

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 15:54:41]