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Ethnoplasty

Why Does Corey Play Bridge With His Nose?

By Corey Levitan

 

When my mother was 15, as she tells it, she roller-skated into a wall and that’s how her nose developed a hook.

When her father was 15, as he told it, he got cracked by a stickball bat and that’s how his nose developed a hook.

When I was 15, nothing happened … and my nose developed a hook. Sorry, elders, but guess what?

Today, I’ve come to Beauty by Design, the Las Vegas office of plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Troell, for a nose job consult. I have no intention of having the surgery. I’m married, so it no longer matters how I look. However, I was always curious, and what’s the harm in subjecting my profile to a computer simulation of surgery?

Not all Jews have “Jewish” noses. The shape of facial features varies according to region, and Jewish ancestry is a mix of regions. However, the proboscises of Hebrews like me, with Mediterranean heritage, are the ones that tend to show up on Google Earth maps. It’s a trait we share with the majority of Arabs, Italians and Greeks.

The Mediterranean climate, scientists believe, encourages plump growth in both noses and olives. (Bigger noses supposedly do a better job of warming and humidifying cold, arid, nighttime desert air before it enters the lungs, according to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Olives, I didn’t do any research on.)

“In general, most people go to what the nose looks better as,” Dr. Troell tells me, “and that turns out to be more of what a Caucasian nose is.”

The reason for the American beauty standard is obvious: Our melting pot was constructed by – and for most of its history has consisted overwhelmingly of –White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Finding a nose job in Israel, by comparison, is as rare as finding a literal job in Las Vegas. But why do we buy into this beauty standard so wholeheartedly, so subconsciously? (It’s not like Jewish nose job patients seek Jew-ectomies. They just want to look better.)

Attending high school in a New York suburb that was virtually half-Jewish and half-Italian, I found that few kids looked down their noses at my nose; it was the default model. I even remember one Jewish girl being gorgeous enough – in spite of her hook – to earn me a “D” in Mr. Rudolph’s geometry class. In fact, as I learned after her surgery, the hook was part of her appeal; her new Barbie look did nothing for me. (And that, I used to tell myself, is the only reason we didn’t hook up.)

Still, I had a television, and “The Love Boat” and “The Sonny & Cher Show” told me that something was wrong, something that needed fixing. (OK, maybe not “Sonny & Cher.”) Many of my friends and family members must have felt similarly. I won’t identify them, since I may be in their wills, but three Jewish people very close to me got their rhinos plastied during my childhood, swearing me to secrecy in cover-ups involving falsified two-week vacations and dark glasses. (Deciding upon invasive surgery as the only possible way to like yourself more is apparently not something to take excessive pride in.)

When droves of Jews began arriving at Ellis Island in the early 20th century, however, it was more than vanity that made them want to eradicate all signs branding them “other than white.” Want ads frequently included the words “only Christians need apply,” American icon Henry Ford circulated racist nonsense about the Elders of Zion and, as late as 1945, Dartmouth and other colleges maintained and defended Jewish admission quotas.

So they started with what they could afford to change: their names. This was especially true of Jews seeking to enter show business. Would we ever have known the names Izzy Demsky, Bernard Schwartz or Allen Konigsberg had they not been changed to Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Woody Allen? It’s hard to say. But because those guys weren’t up for the experiment, the message their actions conveyed to their knowledgeable fans was that being Jewish was unacceptable to mainstream America.

Since the big nose has been part of anti-Semitic stereotypes since the Middle Ages, the surgery came next. Only Howard Stern and Joan Rivers (Joan Molinsky) spring to mind as celebrities who freely admit to it. But Google some old photos of Winona Ryder (Winona Horowitz) and Natalie Portman (Natalie Herslag) and you’ll catch what I’m trying to say.

It’s not ironic that the modern nose job came from pre-World War II Germany, since few Jewish populations were as thoroughly assimilated. It was invented, in fact, by a Jew to make his fellow Jews look less Jewish. And shortly before his death in 1934, Dr. Jacques (born Jakob) Joseph was no longer performing the surgery for aesthetic reasons but to help save patients from the earliest death camps.

“Your septum is too long,” Dr. Troell says as he sics a computer morphing program on a detailed photo that brutally lays my nose out in front of my nose – in addition to revealing how inaccurate I am at sideburn-trimming. Several intense clicks and drags of the mouse follow.

We haven’t even gotten to the hook, and he is already fake-amputating the end of my cartilage and tilting the result 5 percent upwards. (“We’re seeing too much inside your nostrils,” he explains. On the positive side, Troell says I look “nearly perfect” from the front au naturel, a fact that doesn’t need pointing out to someone who spent his entire dating life attempting to remain at that angle.)

There are signs that beauty standards are changing, as they always do in every culture. (In Ancient Rome, for instance, the ideal woman was plump, since that suggested no peasant-like lack of nourishment. And in 1970s America, Sean Connery’s toupee was considered reasonable.)

Of 2,000 respondents to an Allure magazine poll last year, 73 percent of women said they found curvier bodies more attractive than they did 10 years ago, and 64 percent believed that women of mixed race represent the “epitome of beauty.” (When the magazine conducted a similar poll in 1991, beauty was epitomized by Christie Brinkley.)

According to a recent article in Tablet magazine, nose jobs are down 37 percent from last year. And although ethnic data are not recorded, the article suggests nose jobs are down even more among Jews.

If these supposed changes are valid, a possible reason is a rise in ethnic pride spurred by our changing population: According to Census data, last year (for the first time) most U.S. children under a year old were members of racial or ethnic minorities. (Although Jews still make up less than 2 percent of the American population, at least we’re holding stronger than the WASP.)

I also think we Jews owe a debt of gratitude to the groundwork laid by “Seinfeld.” Twenty years ago, Jerry and his fellow domain-masters successfully proved what even they didn’t initially believe: Mainstream America was ready for a network television show that hung itself out there like a veritable big matzo ball – depicting its characters as looking, sounding and acting like members of the tribe (although only the lead identified as one).

I can’t say how my life might have gone had I joined my friends and family members on their falsified two-week vacations with dark glasses at age 16. But I can’t see how it could have gone much better. I ended up with a gorgeous wife and daughter and, until last year, a successful career. Yes, I look Jewish (or Italian or Greek). Eventually, though, I learned to flip feeling out of place into a point of self-pride, as I developed this unique personality I like to call “hysterical” and “larger-than-life” and that only a few people like to call “self-obsessed” and “repugnant.”

Dr. Troell puts the final touches on his simulation of me with a straightened snout, shaved chin, plumped lips and about $8,000 more in credit card debt. “This is how you can look,” he says.

Wow. The guy on the “after” side of the computer screen is hot. I mean, Michael Douglas hot – even if his sideburns could still use a better trim. Hmm. Would you still respect me if I took back everything I just wrote and disappeared for two weeks?