On Bella Hadid, beauty standards and the shame of hiding your ethnicity

I had just turned 20 when someone who loved me deeply told me I had a big nose. It was said with affection, but it still hit hard, even though nose jobs were common (and nothing to be ashamed about) in our Lebanese community.

I spent every day of the next few years analysing my nose from every angle every time I passed a mirror. But when I first saw plastic surgeons about my nose five years later, I couldn’t commit to the surgery: their suggested digital imaging modifications showed a flawless, petite-ish nose that felt at odds with my face. I wanted to correct a deviated septum and improve my breathing, but I didn’t want it to lose too much of its length and downward point in case I stopped looking ethnic, a motivation the doctors couldn’t understand.

Years after, still insecure, I caved in. Today, my nose is smaller, slightly straighter and easier to breathe through, but ironically, still somewhat lopsided. My big dorsal hump, I now realise, balanced out the rest of my non-symmetrical face, but it was also the physical similarity I shared most with my father, which I feel guilty about every time I see his face.

Turns out, I spent 15 years wanting a procedure I’m not sure was worth it. And I am not the only one.

Earlier this week, in an interview with Vogue, Palestinian-American supermodel Bella Hadid finally admitted to the rhinoplasty the internet long-suspected she’d had done. But the revelation that people’s collective suspicions were correct was more tragic than triumphant – Hadid had had the procedure at just 14 years old, telling the magazine, “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it.”

Concerns about who exactly is performing life-altering surgery on a 14-year-old aside, Hadid’s admission is a testament to the pervasiveness of Eurocentric beauty ideals.

Monash University’s Dr Michelle Smith, author of Consuming Beauty, says that women who don’t naturally embody European beauty ideals have been under immense pressure to conform for longer than we realise.

“When modern cosmetic surgery first began in the US in the late nineteenth century, nose jobs were most commonly sought out so that people with ‘ethnic’ features might pass as white, often to aid in finding employment,” she explains. “European standards of beauty not only inform who our culture deems attractive, but who is seen to be ‘like us’.”