A Tale of Two Noses

On my rhinoplasty's 10th birthday, I'm reflecting on plastic surgery, pretty privilege, and how that choice has reshaped more than just my face.

I got my mother’s nose.

Luckily, I also got her second one.

I got my Nose Job™ at the age of twenty-one, which anyone familiar with the practice will tell you, is highly unusual. The first wave of recognizable rhinoplasty comes at sixteen, when kids with the most progressive parents would spend their winter break hiding in their bedrooms and maybe posting bandage photos on their Close Friends Story (I assume, since Stories weren’t around back in my day.)

The most socially acceptable time to get your nose done is just before college, when you can magically transform in both appearance and personality. This, of course, is now accompanied by the all-important “social media scrub”, with all previous photos being wiped from the Internet as if they were entering witness protection.

The other universally accepted time for a nose job is in proper adulthood - say, in your late-twenties, early-thirties - thanks to the sudden appearance of a “deviated septum.” Or perhaps, “an old sports injury that just had to be fixed. I mean, I couldn’t breathe!”

Not me. I got mine smack-dab in the middle of college, for all the professors and frat boys to see. Around this same time, I chopped off my extension-filled hair (the gross ones that you had to iron in), and lost twenty-nine pounds, which people somehow thought I lost in the center of my face. Losing nearly thirty pounds and getting a bob / Nose Job™ over the course of six months is what some people would call a “radical transformation”.

And it radically transformed the way I look at the world.

The reason for this abrupt, mid-college rhinoplasty? I wish I could tell you I’d spent years of soul searching. That I had an epiphany about my self-esteem that urged me to grab my destiny with two fists and take agency over my appearance. Here’s the truth:

An acting teacher recommended it.

GASP! I know, but please put down the pitchforks. Of all the reasons I should be in therapy, this hardly cracks the top ten. This teacher examined me with squinted thoughtful eyes, and like some sort of branding oracle, decreed: “You are in between types. You’re not a leading lady, but you’re not a character actor, either. If you want to be a leading lady, you’d have to lose fifteen pounds and maybe get a nose job, but I don’t think you want to do that. If you want to be a character actress, you’ll probably have to go the other way. Right now, you’re too difficult to cast.”

Listen. Maybe a better woman would have stood up abruptly, stormed to the door and shouted with righteous indignation, “How dare you! I’m perfect, just the way I am, whether this town likes it or not!!” before slamming the door and winning an Oscar one year later. Such a woman was not in the building that day. Instead, I went straight home, dialed my mom and told her to call the doctor. “I’m going in.”

Thanks to my mom’s nose job journey decades prior, I was fortunate enough to get an appointment with a Very Big Name™ in rhinoplasty. His client list is downright legendary. He studied under the man who did Marilyn Monroe’s nose, which we all know is the nose that launched a thousand surgeries. When he looks at you, he does so as an artist would, angling your head this way and that, examining you with perfectly pursed lips. He is also well-known for his restraint. During my initial consultation, I asked him if I should consider lip injections, to which he said no, that would totally throw off the balance of my features. (Though perhaps this is just brilliant reverse psychology, because I immediately trusted him to do whatever else he wanted to my face.)

So, at the unusual age of twenty-one, I arrived at five in the morning to an elegant but freezing office in Beverly Hills, my bare legs shaking in my blue surgical gown. I was assured I would not look too different – That mine was a simple surgery; nothing drastic. The minimalist-lover’s Rhinoplasty, if you will! Still, changing the focal point of your face forever is no small endeavor, and the nerves had started to creep in. I stared at my face in the mirror, trying to memorize the arch of my bridge; the bump in its center when you looked at it from the side (I requested I keep the bump, you know. For character’s sake).

What if this was a massive mistake?

What if I looked plastic, or like the uncanny, off-brand version of myself? Was I a bad feminist?

Was Marilyn a bad feminist?!

I turned back to my mom, who was seated on the edge of my waiting table, and asked, timidly: “Do you think this is a good idea?” My mother, always level-headed and wise, took my hand in hers and squeezed it tight.

“Autumn,” she said, “You are beautiful, just the way you are. And after this, you’re going to look like Scarlet Johansson.”

I was in surgery thirty minutes later.

Except, of course, I did not look like Scarlet Johansson once the bandages came off. What I looked like was myself, only with one of those Snapchat filters that we all agree are ruining society. And I would be lying to you – and to myself – if I say I didn’t feel fantastic. I walked into every room as though I were Scarlet Freaking Johansson, and that adjustment in confidence alone affected every aspect of my life. I learned the value of feeling valuable. It made me pay more attention to my skin care, my fashion choices, the way I presented myself to strangers. It fundamentally changed the way I moved through the world.

And yet.

Recently, I came across an A.I. application that allows you to blend your partner’s face with your own, generating pictures of “your future children.” I leapt at this opportunity, as my husband and I both very much want kids and I am notoriously impatient, so I threw my data at the Chinese and downloaded the app. Eagerly, I sifted through photos of me and Dor, trying to find attractive-but-honest representations of each of us – no headshots, something candid! - but then I realized:

None of these were honest representations.

Not a one.

If I have a daughter, she might inherit my nose. The first one. The one with the bigger bump and the thicker bridge. She will grow up in a world where more and more noses look just like mine, with less and less wrinkles, thicker lips, higher eyebrow arches. She will see less and less noses like hers – like ours – and at some point, she will start to feel insecure. She will wonder what is wrong with her, why she wasn’t invited to the middle-school party, why her crush flinched when their arms brushed in the hall, why it hurts so desperately to be a woman in the world. And this daughter of mine - with pimpling skin and brace-filled teeth - she’ll ask me if she’s beautiful, and I will say of course, my baby, you’re perfect. Even if somewhere deep down, I believe that the world will be kinder to her and offer her more and be a tiny-bit less cruel if she followed in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother and just shaved the bridge and axed the bump and maybe got a few front highlights.

Because the ugly truth about the world? It’s kinder to those who are pretty.

If I do have a daughter, I’ll have to hope the culture has evolved into a more loving, accepting place - In no way thanks to me and my altered face. So, I deleted the A.I. baby-generating app from my phone. (Take that, China!!) I reapplied my tinted sunscreen, because I’m trying to avoid wrinkles (but in a feminist way!!) Then I poured myself a cup of coffee, opened Substack and started to write.

In ways, the subject of getting work done lost its taboo. In Los Angeles, “I got filler”, feels much closer to, “I got a facial” than anything else. Lasers are the new middle ground - after all, it’s not actual surgery, which of course is totally different! But the question of more - ahem - significant stuff is batted away with false lashes. Nose jobs, face lifts, implants of various varieties…these all still feel embarrassing somehow. Shameful, despite their obvious prevalence. I’m torn on whether we should be forced to talk about it. On one hand, it’s truly no one’s business. To each their own, and honestly, who cares?! But on the other hand, if we’re all suddenly developing cheek bones that look like Katana blades, at what point are we obligated to admit that we got some help?

The newest addition to the conversation, of course, is Ozempic and its subsequent affiliates. Losing weight - and the potential benefits it has on an individual’s health - seems to be far less important than how it was lost. Did you only eat cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs for six months? Or did you take a dreaded shot? For whatever reason, “natural” still seems to reign supreme. Beauty only counts if it was created deep within the earth over thousands of years, not recreated in a lab. Even if the result is, chemically, exactly the same.

I’m thirty-one years old, which means this is the tenth anniversary of my not-so-new nose. I can’t bring myself to regret it. I know, this is not a take I’m supposed to have. I let the photo filters win! But I sincerely love my nose, the confidence it gave me, the way it still has that little bump - just slightly more refined. Bella Hadid once said she wished she had kept the nose of her ancestors. That is lovely for supermodel Bella Hadid. For now, at least, I - comedy writer Autumn Chiklis - am grateful that I called up the doctor that day, and will openly talk about it to anyone who asks.

Besides: in an odd way, it brought me closer to my own ancestors.

I look more like my mom now than ever.