BackNew noses for old
Stage artists, embarrassed by their ungainly noses, seek cosmetic surgery to remake their faces
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If I give you the power to modify or enhance any one feature on your face, what will you choose?" That was my guardian angel coming up with a tempting offer. Eyes, ears, forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, chin: they were all there and I could change one of them. Starting with my ears, I decided they had no appeal; I could not think of any poet ever having written in praise of the ears of his beloved. Eyes, of course, can be brown or blue, small or big, and can make a difference. Stage artists, embarrassed by their ungainly noses, seek cosmetic surgery to remake their faces.
Noses have made people famous. In the Pensées, Blaise Pascal remarks, “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." This is generally taken to mean that it was Cleopatra’s nose that gave her strength of character and physical beauty to influence and control the most powerful men of her time. The adjective generally used is aquiline, “curved like an eagle’s nose", from Latin aquila, which means eagle. Such a nose is also called a Roman nose or a beak nose.
When Cleopatra’s nose is mentioned, people are likely to remember Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film. Her petite nose is the right size and shape, and matches our image of the last pharaoh of Egypt.
Most mammals have their noses like human noses, but an elephant’s nose is different in shape and function. It is called a trunk, and is used to pick objects from the ground, draw water to the mouth or splash it on its own back and, not very conspicuously, to smell objects. The rhinoceros has one or two horns on its nose: Latin rhin means nose and ceros means horn.
Moving from Cleopatra’s time to the 20th century, we have a second famous nose. Cyrano de Bergerac, a soldier and poet, a character in a French play of that name, is depicted as a person with a long nose. When the play was presented on stage for the first time, it had José Ferrer in the title role; in its modern rendering it has Gérard Depardieu as Cyrano. The hero was in love with Roxanne, a distant cousin. But he had no hope of her loving him, as he had this excrescence of a nose. He made fun of his own appearance, and in one of the insults he composed for his nose, he said: “Oh that this too, too solid nose would melt," repeating Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.
In the children’s story of Pinocchio, the puppet’s nose becomes longer every time he is under stress or tells a lie. After passing through several bizarre adventures, Pinocchio changes from a puppet into a real child and is rejoined with his father.
While I was pursuing my interest in Cyrano and Cleopatra, I read a Time magazine article about teenagers in Korea. The column titled “Peer pressure plastics" reports that teenagers in large numbers are seeking the help of plastic surgeons to remake their faces. Eyes are the first choice; nose jobs are also popular. The report says, “kids drop into the plastic surgeon’s office after school, and when they get home their folks can barely recognize them." The same trend can be found in many other emerging societies. As the report says: “In today’s Korea, getting your eyes done can be easier than getting the keys to dad’s car."
If my guardian angel turns up before me again with the same offer, I will say: “Thank you, I don’t need any magical power to reshape my face. There are plastic surgeons galore; I may have to pay through the nose, but that is money well spent."
V.R. Narayanaswami is a former professor of English, and has written several books and articles on the usage of the language. He looks at the peculiarities of business and popular English usage in his fortnightly column.
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