A love letter to the 'Persian nose'

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Growing up the child of Iranian immigrants in rural England during the early 2000s, Nickie Shobeiry always felt different from her peers.

That feeling only grew when as a pre-teen she became more aware of what she calls her "Persian nose." 

Shobeiry recalls trying to hide her feature behind "tragic looking bangs" and thinking, "Wow, things would be so great if only my nose was straight."

But there was another solution staring her in the face, one Shobeiry says her parents wouldn't have so much as raised an eyebrow over: a nose job. 

"I think every Iranian knows several [family members] who've gone through it," said Shobeiry, explaining that Iran is known for having one of the highest rates of rhinoplasty in the world. 

It's a phenomenon that's always fascinated Shobeiry, even more so when she found that nose jobs among the Iranian diaspora are equally as common as for Iranian citizens.

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Now a writer and a film and radio producer with her own communications business based in Ottawa, she set out to explore why — and to better understand her own relationship to her nose — in a video for CBC Ottawa's Creator Network. 

A shared insecurity 

Shobeiry started by asking the Persian diaspora about their own struggles with their looks.

Shobeiry's cousin Mariam Zohouri says she, too, wrestled with embracing her natural nose in the face of western beauty standards, especially in a family where talking about each other's appearance was the norm. 

"It's passing comments on a relative or even a stranger's nose, and just casually commenting on how huge it is," she recalled. 

Zohouri says it wasn't until she was in university and came across social media posts from Iranian and Arabic women who proudly showcased their features that things changed. 

"They let their hair be totally naturally curly and they were in big bold lipstick," she said. "I remember seeing that and being like, oh, they look stunning."

Shobeiry also reached out to prominent Iranians in Canada and the United States.

"In my teenage years, I would say that my nose and ears grew up. The rest of my face didn't seem to, so I was very conscious of it," said American comedian and actor Maz Jobrani. 

When his dad suggested, unprompted, that Jobrani could get a nose job if he wanted to, he realized others were conscious of this, too. 

While Jobrani says he loves his nose now, he still experiences moments of doubt. 

"Do I once in a while see ... some leading man with a great nose?" he asked. "I mean, sure, that goes in your mind sometimes."

Ultimately, he says embracing his nose has helped increase his self-confidence. 

Celebrity chef Samin Nosrat isn't quite there. 

Growing up, she says her mother would tell her that her nose and chin needed to be fixed, and even said she would save up for plastic surgery. 

That never happened, and Nosrat says she was left with "a complex and no solution," dealt with through years of therapy.

"[Today] I would not say I have incredibly positive feelings about my nose, but I also don't have incredibly negative ones. It's just neutral. This is what it is," she said. 

Loving your lineage  

Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin's experience with the phenomenon came as a bit of culture shock. 

"I never thought [my nose] was too big until I visited Iran for the first time," she said, remembering when a woman at a house party in 1999 told her she was beautiful, followed by, "You should really get a nose job."  

"I was floored." 

After that Mohyeddin began noticing women in the streets wearing bandages across their noses "like a badge of honour." 

Mohyeddin said realizing how prevalent cosmetic surgery was in the country, where it is now mandatory for women to wear a veil, made her sad.  

"It's such an indictment on so many layers of Iranian society … the way that you can only dress up this area of your body because that's all that the regime allows women to show, right?" she said.

"So you get your nose done."

• The long fight for women's rights in Iran

Farinaz Basmechi says Mohyeddin's assessment lines up with what she's seen both as a woman born in Iran, with many friends who've undergone the surgery, and in her work researching the online movement against the hijab law. 

"I think women over the years always found ways to express their presence in society more or less in a way they prefer," she said, explaining that sales in makeup and beauty products saw an increase after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. 

Now a doctoral student in feminist and gender studies at the University of Ottawa, Basmechi says she's noticing a shift in younger generations, which she attributes to the Woman Life Freedom movement and its worldwide protests in the wake of the death of an Iranian woman imprisoned for improperly wearing a hijab. 

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"In bigger cities, you can see that there are some women and girls who are not really wearing what is being dictated to them," she said.

She suggests nose jobs may be one way some women choose to exert power and control over their own bodies. 

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For Mohyeddin, her time in Iran left her with a firmer conviction in the value of a nose like hers.

"There's something about the Iranian nose that I think is so beautiful. It's so pronounced and so distinctive." 

Shobeiry, who eventually decided against a nose job, agrees.

"I've been lucky to have a very beautiful relationship with my parents and the older I get, the more I realize what a gift it is that I do get to carry their features with me," she said, though she acknowledges it's also a gift to be able to make that decision. 

"I hope for a day where all Iranian women have that exact same freedom to make decisions based purely on what they want for their lives and nothing else," Shobeiry said. 

"Whether or not that choice involves cosmetic surgery, the most important thing is that we feel at peace with our faces." 

For her, that means embracing her roots, something she hopes her video will inspire younger generations to do.

"If I had seen something like this when I was a much younger person, I think that would have meant a lot."