I’ll start with something simple, the quote on this header. “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.”
When I was young, I hated my nose. It is rounded and large and nothing like the streamlined schnozes of Christy Turlington and her ilk. Even as a child, I picked up on the fact that our society is not very kind to non-WASP noses. Barbra Streisand, for example, was repeatedly pressured to “fix” her nose and she is still caricatured by it. The other problem I had was that I can’t place my nose genetically. I have my dad’s eyes and my grandpa’s little toes, but no one in my family has a nose like mine. As I saw it, there was a mutant thing in the middle of my face.
As I grew up, my ideas of beauty and self worth changed. I began to look in the mirror more objectively, and I learned to see that my nose, as a friend once told me, gives me character. Now I love it. Even if it doesn’t fit in my family, it fits me.
As an Egyptophile and a girl with an atypical nose, I love Pascal’s Cleopatra quote and the idea that at one point in history, a girl with a prominent nose, a nose with character, was the most powerful woman in the world partly because of her nose. Certainly, Cleo’s success had more to do with the fact that she could speak several languages and was cunning and charming, but one mustn’t make the mistake of underestimating the power of a beautiful woman. And women with strong noses are beautiful too.