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In Praise of Big Noses
- Michigan State University Press
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123 In Praise of Big Noses Persis Karim I am the only one of four sisters who hasn’t gone under the knife. I resisted the pleas of my aunt and sisters to become “more beautiful,” “more you.” I’ve kept my stately proboscis intact—choosing not to excise its grandeur. It suits me, I suppose—evidence of my father, those people who live in the drier, hotter climes of the Mediterranean, in high desert plateaus, cooling themselves with naso-thermo-regulation. My old Jewish boyfriend used to say how do the goyim breathe from those things anyway? On my wedding day, my husband, also Jewish and rather plentiful in that region of his face completed his vows by saying “there is no guarantee in love, but of this, I am certain: if we have a child he or she will have a really big nose.” When I nuzzle him with mine, he pulls back his face, jumps at the coldness of its tip. Contrary to popular belief, the nose is not merely cosmetic—it can gauge temperature beyond the body. And that’s another thing, I’ve realized about the nose— that smell is an underrated sense, perhaps a gift. Imagine the possibilities for amplification: aromas of jasmine, apple pie, saffron, lemon, rose, might grow more intense, depending on the height and angle of that fleshy mound. I admit to having no scientific evidence for this, but I do wonder 124 what happens when a person alters the things they were born with. Whole industries were born from Iranian women watching blonde, petite-nosed movie stars who made them forget their own striking beauty took thousands of years to evolve, only to be undone by someone who decided that hairless, plucked, tucked, sliced, nipped, and trimmed, were the loveliest of them all. I like to think of the nose as great art waiting to be discovered. Like those large-nosed kings depicted on sides of temples, on papyrus, on caves, in colorful Mayan pictographs like Popul Voh. Noses were signs of nobility and prowess. Any king with a puny one might have been thought of as small and impotent. These days, I get a steady stream of e-mails offering penis enlargement. But that’s hidden, visible only in bedroom interludes. The nose is the public display of one’s endowments—the relief map of a human face. I study people’s noses in order to read their origins— to situate my gaze, to find how far out in the world they really are. ...