I have always hated my nose. While my three siblings each took after my Mom in the nose department, my proboscis is undeniably a scaled-down version of my Dad’s Irish honker.
Now, I’d understand if friends and family are surprised at this pronouncement. Rhinoplasty has been a life-long — but mostly hidden — dream. Also in truth, as noses go, mine is totally fine, really pretty unremarkable. For the first few years of life it was an adorable little button. But as I grew, the rounded tip and shape of my nostrils put me in mind of the nose cone and twin propellers on a WW2 Lockheed B-14 bomber – the kind with very shapely ladies painted on the side. 
When compared to the pert protuberances of my cousins or the sweet face of any Disney princess, my nose made me feel unmistakably common. Perhaps because it’s the sort you’d usually find on the jolly farmer’s wife. Or the charwoman with a heart of gold who, after a punishing 12 hour shift scrubbing floors, still remembers to go feed the birds. And let us not forget the chummy best friend sporting the requisite messy pigtails and a defining dusting of freckles. Like many little girls, I yearned to be the princess. But my nose painted me otherwise.
So I started collecting noses, I mean images of noses, with an eye toward getting mine reshaped later for, you know, my ‘real life.’ Myrna Loy was an early favorite. She had a sharp tongue and a sculptured profile which seemed the perfect combination — smart, funny and beautiful. Grace Kelly (in my opinion, a brilliant light comedienne) was not only stunning she had one gorgeous nose.
But in high school, I became absolutely, positively obsessed with the model Karen Graham. In the 1970s she was the face of Estee Lauder cosmetics. You saw her everywhere; in their ads, in fashion spreads and on cover after cover after cover of Vogue magazine. You couldn’t get away from her, most especially in my bedroom where I had the walls plastered with easily 150 magazine pages featuring Karen’s perfectly symmetrical face. 
To me, the one thing these three women shared was a sense of refinement which, at the time, I equated with beauty which, at the time, I equated with acceptance. You know, the circle of life. And the nose on my face seemed anything but refined. So I scoured every beauty magazine looking for any and all suggestions on how to make my nose appear slimmer using makeup. I shaded and powdered in hopes of achieving a more sculptured, lady-like air. But in the mirror, and worse in every snapshot (because that ‘camera adds 10 pounds’ theory seemed to apply strictly to my nose), what I saw told me to go milk the cows and then muck out the barn for good measure.
Lest you think I exaggerate, that this was all in my mind, may I share the nickname ascribed to me in the 6th grade by my friend, Johanna — it was “Pup Dog.” You see, Hanna-Jo (as I called her) and I were an enterprising pair. In addition to starting our own band in her living room (as much influenced by Bobby Vinton as the Rolling Stones — the clear mystery here being why we never secured a recording contract, but I digress…) So, in addition to our musical prowess, Hanna-Jo and I were serious junior business women. In the back pages of an issue of my AMERICAN GIRL MAGAZINE (see below) there was a delicious opportunity. A company, I believe it was called Carlton Cards, had a mini-franchise available. For some clearly affordable price (because we managed to do it), you could order a shipment of their greeting cards. Once the big box arrived, the next step was to sell them door-to-door. (Ding, dong, Avon calling!) The cards came in boxes of standard size cards as well as a monster 24″ x 10″ version. Thinking these would clearly be our huge sellers, we committed half our inventory to these oversized wonders. 
Just as the idea of a paper route is always more palatable than the reality of 5:30 in the morning, selling these cards was nowhere near as easy as we’d assumed. Now we (meaning me and my sixth grade girlfriends) found these colorful puppies and kittens with their baby faces sporting huge, welling eyes, positively adorable!! But with our limited audience (the 13 girls in our class and a few accommodating neighbors), we soon ran out of customers.
It was during a pajama party at the home of another classmate, Sue, that we were once again mooning over our cache of cute cardboard canines (we had plenty to go around…) Suddenly, Hanna-Jo pointed to the front of the oversized card in her hand and shrieked, “Your nose looks just like this puppy. I’m going to call you Pup Dog!” Now, she meant it as a compliment, for as I’ve already said, we thought these cards were divine. But to my ear I was being compared to a fuzzy, round-edged cartoon. Less in the mold of beautiful Cinderella, more Goofy Fairy Godmother #3, the pudgy, endlessly blue Merriweather. While I adored the character I kept envisioning her picture over my name in the yearbook. And I didn’t like it one bit!
My dream of rhinoplastic refinement remained alive. During the late 80s, a podiatrist I worked for wrangled me a free consultation with a colleague, a tony upper eastside plastic surgeon. Every woman in his waiting room sported the same pert little peak. Apparently I’d walked onto the set of Chapter 2: The Stepford Noses. Ooops, wrong casting call.
In short order I was shown into his very modern, very white inner office. Sitting on the desk, although they were still in their infancy, was a monster PC! The screen pulsed with the promise of beauty and elegance to be had for the asking. I sat in my assigned chair and tried to keep my gaze on the doctor and not gaping out the 12 foot windows framing the glorious Metropolitan Museum of Art directly across the street (when I say tony, I mean tony!) I managed to pay attention as Doctor “Tony” demonstrated exactly what he’d do to my face using his on-screen anatomical line drawing program. He was polite but parsed me a total of 3 minutes. Clearly he’d decided I could never afford surgery at his practice and he was cutting his losses. He exited the room without even shaking my hand.
A few years later, my roommate at the time, Maria, decided it was finally time to fix that deviated septum she gave herself smacking into a diving board back in high school. So she did her research (meaning she found an ad in the classifieds of BACKSTAGE, the gold standard audition rag for actors trying to make it in New York City.) Her only caveat was she wanted a surgeon who would guarantee that no one could tell she’d had anything done. Although I was rather hoping for the opposite, as her doc offered free consultations, I went along for the ride.
Sitting in front of his desk in the cozy, cluttered office (no distracting windows this time), Doctor Really Nice Guy treated me to a friendly, “So, what are you interested in discussing today?” I was prepared. I started my pitch. “I know it may not look like I need it, but I’ve always wanted to have my nose done…”
He raised his hand to stop me. Though clearly a lovely man (and based on my roommate’s successful — and never questioned — results, a darn good surgeon), I was a bit confused. Suddenly he leaned forward and placed his hands on my face. I must have jumped, because he calmly explained, “I can’t speak to what I can do for your nose without feeling the structure of your face.”
Well, that made miles of sense to me. When I remarked that Doctor “Tony” hadn’t done this he gave a sad little nod of his head. And Doctor Really Nice Guy, he didn’t look bored or dismissive (as had the Prince of Fifth Avenue), instead he began to tell me his story. His real love was reconstructive plastic surgery, helping people come back from accident and misfortune. He confessed he’d grown so tired of treating the upper eastside ladies who lunch, that he’d placed that ad in Backstage hoping for a more interesting clientele. I was feeling better by the minute. After a bit more manipulation, he sat back and announced, “Okay, I can see why you want your nose done. The tip is rounded and it’s upturned, giving you a bit of a porcine appearance. Plus, your nose crooks slightly to the left.” Finally, someone who could see the “real” nose on my face. I nearly wept in relief.
Well, that was over 20 years ago and luckily I have an expanded appreciation of my own non-symmetry. I still haven’t had the surgery. Maybe all I needed back then was someone to assure me I wasn’t nuts, my nose did invite a bit of tweaking to meet the standard of the day. Maybe it was because I didn’t have any health insurance. Or perhaps I was just prescient enough to know someday I would reunite with Hanna-Jo on Facebook. And keeping the face I was born with absolutely invited her to start our first conversation in decades by typing, “Hello, Pup Dog!” After all, no one wants to disappoint an old friend.
I do confess one regret — not having kept one of those 28″ x 10″ cardboard canines. It probably would have become a real conversation piece at parties (but only if I had framed it and hung it on my wall chances of which are, truthfully, pretty slim…)
Finally if I may, dear reader, I’d like to end this tale with a touch of very salient advice. A magical message that will help you in any crisis of faith or beauty:
“Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo…”
Oh well, guess it’s not so bad after all.
ripeproject 