Plastic surgeon Julius Few understands the maddening complexity of what should be superficial and straightforward -- a nose job -- though he's optimistic, like Rohrich, that the "self-hatred" stigma of the procedure has abated to the point that most blacks reshaping their noses are, like the majority of rhinoplasty patients, merely correcting anatomical inconsistencies. Few, who is black and an assistant professor of surgery at Northwestern University in Chicago, praises the study and says that, given that nose jobs among blacks are increasing, this is an opportune moment to promote the validity of whole black facial aesthetic. "We [blacks] grew up believing that seeking out plastic surgery was tantamount to wanting to be more white," says Few. "But with increasing information on this subject, blacks can achieve what other groups have long had" -- plastic surgery without the stigma of ethnic loathing -- "and understand they're not doing anything against their upbringing."

In the photos of pre- and post-op black patients included in Rohrich's study, the women did wind up with noses true to their faces -- nasal-facial harmony prevailed. But frankly, I didn't see much disharmony to begin with (this despite the women looking a bit haggard and bare faced in the "before" pictures, nicely made up and hair-doed in the "after" ones -- an old fashion-magazine makeover trick to heighten contrast where too little exists. And the fact that the "after" photos invariably featured lighter, brighter complexions and straighter, neater hair should be lost on no one.) Sure, I'm making aesthetic judgments here -- one person's bothersome pug nose is another's perfection. Yet ironically, those photos reminded me that black faces can better accommodate broad noses -- the so-called imperfection that the plastic surgeons are targeting -- and so it makes less sense to change them. But cosmetic surgery is predicated on ideals, which are elusive at best, unattainable at worst, and always in the eye of the beholder. "We don't really judge," says Barbara Porter, Rohrich's assistant. "We just want to get the problem straightened out." So to speak.

More than one of the photos revealed altered noses that were narrower and more pinched -- not quite faithful to the original and not Michael Jackson either, but something in between. It is that gray area that plastic surgery is really good at staking out and that black people, like all other people, probably want: a change that is better than nature, but not obviously so. Blacks, who according to the ASPS make up 6 percent of all plastic surgery patients, may be more inclined than most to want to triumph over that nature, given that their looks have historically been used against them and been such an integral part of their oppression. Rohrich's study unwittingly evinces that oppression in the medically dispassionate descriptions of the typical characteristics of a black nose: "Broad and flat dorsum," "Slightly flaring alae," "Ovoid nares." It detailed one patient's complaint of having a nose that was "large and unrefined" -- a common complaint that always involved flaring alae -- which a surgeon transformed into a "narrowed, more refined nose with improved tip definition." The study is commendable for putting the phrase "African-American beauty" in a sentence more than once, but it is a beauty still clearly searching for mainstream context. Few admits he winced at the descriptions himself because it made blackness feel like something not to celebrate but to overcome. Few hopes that his field, the last place anyone would look to for reinforcing the idea that natural is best, will in fact do just that. "Medical technology doesn't make black noses sound attractive," he says. "But they are. They have an inherent beauty."

Certainly they do -- that's what we've been telling ourselves since the '70s. I personally don't know any blacks who've fixed their noses or plan to. The procedure (which costs about $12,000) is perhaps being done more frequently though not more overtly, which may mean that blacks still fear that their inner tragic mulatto could rear its ugly head at any moment. As for me, I'm still pretty content with my pugness. Not only does it harmonize with my face, but it also helps me assert myself racially and otherwise -- when I get mad, nothing makes the point better than flaring alae. Of course, I still have misgivings about the size of my butt. But that's a final frontier in the black-image war that may be a few years -- and a couple of cosmetic-procedure trends -- in the future.

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