Brothers under the septum

16 June 2003

Erin Aubry Kaplan, a black essayist in Salon, reports with trepidation on a new study: “Rhinoplasty in the African-American Patient”.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Rod Rohrich, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Texas in Dallas … sees plastic surgery not as a tool of black assimilation—that’s old school—but as a means of individualization, of sculpting each nose in proportion to each face to achieve what he calls “nasal-facial harmony”.

Kaplan is unconvinced. As a member of another ethnic group with a reputation for nasal-facial disharmony, I can relate. She recalls

tragic-mulatto potboiler novels from the late 19th century in which the secretly black heroine’s aquiline nose was like a talisman that always protected her from harm and preceded her in good fortune…

and I recall the Dellwoods’ song from my wife’s Dr. Demento tape:

She got a nose job, she got a nose job
It’s all turned up where it was hanging down
She got a nose job, she got a nose job
And now she’s the prettiest gal in town…

(via john & belle have a blog)

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