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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is promoting nose jobs for African-Americans that won't make their noses European -- just narrower, more refined, and without the flared nostrils. I'm not buying it.
Jun 12, 2003 | When I was about 10, my older brother sometimes called me "Pug." I didn't like it, but it never really galled me the way my brother hoped it would, because as insults went, "pug" was pretty tame. This was the '70s, when the black-is-beautiful movement was in full swing and my light complexion and fine hair -- which could never muster enough kink to be whipped into the requisite Afro -- made me worry that I wasn't black enough; my broad nose actually helped counter that worry and kept me in vogue. Of course, this new affirmation didn't mean that a certain ancient self-hatred had disappeared entirely, but black people at least seemed to have evolved past the musty obsession with chiseled noses as the chief standard bearers of beauty -- something I grew up associating with all those 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.
Now history may be cycling back on itself, with some intriguing modifications. In March, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons -- with 6,000 members the largest plastic surgery organization in the world -- publicized a study that appeared in its medical journal, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, about new techniques in reshaping the African-American nose. The study, "Rhinoplasty in the African-American Patient," advanced a novel-sounding theory that nose jobs for blacks are now less about diminishing ethnic appearance than about preserving it. Anticipating the skepticism that lay people like me might feel, the association quickly detailed its position. It explained that the timeworn European standard of beauty "has stepped aside, encouraging African-Americans to retain their unique ethnic characteristics while improving their overall look." The pitch contended that "with this shift in attitude, plastic surgeons who appreciate ethnic concepts of beauty and the unique anatomic characteristics of the African-American nose can create the most consistent and best results."
Good self-empowerment language, but I wasn't convinced. This didn't sound like progress, but American hucksterism at its most conniving. It looked like the ultimate in having it both ways, the plastic-surgery equivalent of a Ginsu knife ad that promises to cut ferociously and never hurt countertops. It also still felt like a massive fundamental contradiction: Why would a black person interested in preserving his or her ethnic identity consider having a nose job at all? Why would a plastic surgeon who embraces ethnic concepts of beauty want to make those alterations?
The lead author of the study, Dr. Rod Rohrich, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Texas in Dallas, insists the premise is both aesthetically logical and racially ethical. He 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." Rohrich, who is white and who has been performing rhinoplasties for 15 years, says he won't straighten a black nose unless the patient has angular features to match. When doctors do graft a Northern European nose onto a black American face, it results in what he diplomatically calls "racial incongruity" (and what the rest of us might call Michael Jackson syndrome). With nose jobs among blacks on the rise -- which the ASPS can support only anecdotally -- Rohrich believes the time is right for surgeons to take a more nuanced approach to altering black noses, for the good of the profession and patients alike. "Too many surgeons just give people what they want without considering what's best for them," he says, with some distaste. "But I won't give somebody a pencil nose just because they ask for it."
I don't doubt Rohrich's sincerity or the assertion that nose jobs are actually becoming more enlightened (I can see the "Oprah" promo already). But my initial suspicion of black folks getting nose jobs holds. It's difficult for me to believe that anybody black getting their nose done isn't doing it to some degree to look more white and less black -- such is the still considerable burden of history. Because of a tortured struggle for mainstream acceptance that began with slavery and has never ended -- drugstores still sell skin-lightening cream in the beauty aisles, after all -- changing black faces is almost never a purely aesthetic consideration. As they are so often in matters of appearance, racial considerations are never far from the surface.
