The first time I went to see a cosmetic surgeon, I wore high heels. I wanted to look sexy and confident and too beautiful to have any serious concerns about my appearance. As though I was only there casually, somehow, rather than because I hated my face.

I hated my face because I hated my nose. My nose is big. It has a bump on it. It has a lot of character. It makes a statement. It is always the part of me that I blame when I feel unattractive, because it's easy to blame. And because when I look around, I don't see that many examples of well-known pretty women with big noses. When I was fourteen or so, a girl said, "You could be a lot prettier if you got your face fixed." The same year, the only gorgeous big-nosed woman I knew got a nose job. She apologized to me personally.

My senior year of college, I decided to take control. I was going to do the thing that all of my friends said not to do. The thing that made my mother cry when I told her I wanted to do it. The possibility had always been there, but it felt desperate and dark. It felt forbidden. I felt desperate, though. I had waited and waited to learn to love the way I looked, and the lesson had shimmied, wet and taunting, out of my grasp.

When the cosmetic surgeon held up his little hand mirror to show me where my nose had failed at beauty, I liked my reflection. I felt momentarily defiant. Maybe it was some sort of perverted little survival instinct. My brain was screaming, "HE'S GOING TO CUT YOUR FACE OPEN!!! QUICK! SELF-LOVE!"

And then he said, "It definitely needs work." And, trembling, I went ahead with the surgery. I'd made my decision. I was empowered.

I thought I'd look completely different afterward, but I didn't have a clear idea what "different" meant. I knew it meant "better." It meant "smaller" and "straighter." When he asked for a photo from a magazine of a nose I admired, I handed him one of Gisele Bundchen.

She had gotten a nose job. Her former nose looked a little like mine. I held my fingers against either side of my nose and stared at myself in the mirror, trying to guess how it might look when it was thinner. I didn't think I'd look like Gisele, but I had the brash, wild, flung-open sense that anything was possible. Agreeing to surgery was like agreeing to walk through a magic portal. On the other side was something foreign, gorgeous, and previously unimaginable. He was going to fix my face in ways I couldn't comprehend yet. I didn't understand, but I had faith.

When he took the cast off, weeks after the surgery, I was so ready for the dramatic, stunning transformation that I almost saw it. And I did look different. I had giant bruises under my eyes. I thought I could see the new beauty, just behind those bruises.

But my nose wasn't ready to change. It hadn't given up the fight. It wasn't done yelling about my proud Jewish heritage and challenging random Orthodox girls on the street to a nose match. It wasn't done defining my face and being the prominent feature in every photo of me. It refused to be subdued. And when the bruises faded and the swelling eased, I saw something incredible in the mirror. I looked exactly the same.

Everyone said, "You look exactly the same!"

I wanted to know why. The surgeon explained that something that cartilage -- something doesn't usually rejuvenate -- had rejuvenated very quickly. I was especially healthy. He explained that he hadn't shaved down enough of the cartilage after he'd broken my nose. He is apology was gruff, at best. He was defensive. This sort of thing had only happened to him one other time. Happened to him.

I sat still in the now-familiar chair in his examining room. I wasn't surprised. I believed my nose capable of anything. I imagined it deflecting his scalpel. Of course he hardly ever came across noses like mine. My nose was a rare mutant strain. He offered to do another surgery, for free. Something much less serious, with local anesthesia, that would only take a half hour or so. I agreed.

This time, I could feel the seven or eight giant needles being forced through the bridge of my nose, and then the grotesque, if not precisely excruciating, sensation of him hacking at the cartilage. Let me clarify something: I am so squeamish that as a kid I made my mother check Reader's Digest for pictures of surgery before I read it.

The second surgery didn't fix my nose either. It was slightly thinner. But it did not look like a nose that had had a nose job. I still looked like me. Like a girl with a big, bent nose. The surgeon told me that he'd have to break the bridge all over again in order to "get it right." And it would cost the same as the first time. And it would take just as long to recover: A year before I had healed completely.

I waited a year. I almost forgot about it. I moved to the city and worked hard and ate bagels and fell in love. I ignored my nose in the mirror, because I'd already tried, and failed, to tame it. I began to approach a state somewhere in the vicinity of not caring. Sometimes I caught myself looking in the mirror and thinking, "What a hot, weird-looking woman. No one else looks like that."

And then one day I remembered, as though a timer in the distant back of my mind had beeped, and I found myself sitting in the chair across from a cosmetic surgeon. A different one, because this time was going to be different. He had a big office up high, overlooking the city. With leather-bound books on the shelves. He was saying that the ENT specialist who had referred me to him was definitely right.

"Another surgery is in order. No question."

I had a little bit of trouble breathing sometimes at night, from the other two surgeries. He said he could fix that, too, while he fixed my face.

The first surgeon, my ENT, had told me, "Obviously, you're attractive.This isn't about that. It's about giving you the nose you wanted to begin with." It was a great compliment, I'd thought, at the time. In fact, I was surprised at how much it meant to me.

The cosmetic surgeon was saying, "How does your fiancé feel about it?"

"He doesn't want me to do it."

My fiancé was actually horrified that I was considering it. "I love your nose," he said again and again, tracing the bridge. He loved how Jewish I looked. He loved how distinctive it was. He had a little, boyish dash of a nose that looked like it might be laughing mischievously. I wrote a poem about it. It captivated me.

The new surgeon nodded and smiled a little. "Most loved ones are uncomfortable with the procedure. They always think it's ridiculous that the patient wants to change her appearance."

"Yeah," I said, not sure what to say.

"You know," he said offhandedly, "They love the way you look now. It's normal." He looked like someone who'd had to sit through the silly, unrefined, unconditional love people had for one another a million times. And a million times, he'd had to patiently explain, "No, no. You only THINK she's attractive."

But suddenly that love was all I could think about. I thought of all the women who had sat in that chair before me. Armies of women who wanted to change their faces. Who understood how important it was to have a face that looked the way faces were supposed to look. Who had learned how faces are supposed to look in the same magazines and movies and through the same family lore and gossip that taught other girls they were too flat-chested or chubby.

Women who had memorized the averaged proportions of successful faces -- the broad cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and subtle, quaint suggestion of a nose -- that seemed never to go out of fashion. Who told themselves over and over that they were beautiful, and never quite believed it. I thought about these women, and the irrational, oblivious people who loved them and their faces just the way they were. And it occurred to me that I felt kind of happy.

"I'll think about it," I said. And I got up and left.

I walked the approximately one hundred and fifty blocks home, thinking the whole way. I didn't feel as ready to commit as the first time I had sat in a chair like that one. Or the second. Or any of the other times. Even though I'd already gone through it, this time, the decision felt bigger. Maybe more than just my face had changed.






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