I carry my best asset in front. I admire my nose more than all of me. So it is upsetting to discover that my retroussé is passé. Plastic surgery clinics report that the majority of rhinoplasty - otherwise known as a nose job - is undertaken to correct an earlier operation. Those who submitted to the knife in order to achieve that fashionable, pinched, up-turned look a couple of decades ago are now returning to the surgical trolley to get their retroussés removed. Rather than the attribute of distinguished members of society - actor Susan Hampshire was a retroussé role model - my particular nasal shape has become the hallmark of the sniffed-at glamour model. Former lap dancer Natalie Turner had her nose job - "a pretty pixie's" - broadcast live on television, for example.
If you aspire to an air of nobility, the nose of the moment is the Grecian model - long, with no curves and no kinks. You can only look down on someone like Natalie along a fine straight nose-bone. Maybe that is why the Gainsborough exhibition, recently opened at Tate Britain in London, has attracted so much attention. The one feature that is most striking, and most consistent, in his subjects is the uninterrupted fine line of their noses. Even if they weren't born gentry, their nasal shape lent them importance.
A nose has social standing: a broken nose is a sign of a street fighter. We all know a weak nose fronts a weak character; only wimps have nosebleeds. Historically, noses have been exploited for racial stereotyping. According to the 1848 Notes on Noses, a Jewish nose (which we are expected to recognise instinctively) "indicates considerable shrewdness in worldly matters; a deep insight into character, and the facility of turning that insight to profitable account". A nose may be a sign of supposed character, but it is immutable character. You can not make your nose; it makes you.
Until, that is, rhinoplasty arrived in the late 19th century. Here was a chance to not only change how we looked, but who we were. Nose jobs are now the most common form of cosmetic surgery in Britain, beating liposuction. Even senior citizens are increasingly turning to restructuring; unlike the rest of the bony skull, noses are mainly made of cartilage, which continues to grow with age. The average European male will add a centimetre to the length of his nose between the age of 20 and his mid-90s, reaching an impressive average 6.6 centimetres from top to tip. Last summer, after measuring more than 2,500 snouts, researchers in Switzerland revealed that a European 30-year-old male nose is on average 5.6cm by 2.6cm, a female nose 5.1 cm by 2.2cm.
The research was carried out for sound medical reasons; an increase in nose size can be an early symptom of a serious underlying condition. But medicine and morals have always been tight, and the nose has been an ethical battleground. The 1901 edition of Gray's Anatomy remarks, "The skin of the nose also contains a large number of sebaceous follicles, and these, as the result of intemperance, are apt to become affected and the nose reddened. To this the term 'grog-blossom' is popularly applied." Soap star Daniella Westbrook's septum, destroyed through cocaine use, could be interpreted as a 21st-century equivalent. Certainly, we applied more moral than medical judgments to her very visible condition.
Our nose defines us more than any other feature. It is the centre of attention on the face, the first thing we see in someone else. But for such a prominent part, it strangely lacks sex appeal. It is a struggle to see the nose as erotic, and it is one of the few areas of the body that it is difficult to fetishise. An Eskimo kiss - said, probably inaccurately, to have originated in the Arctic to prevent the lips freezing together on contact - is a strange display of intimacy for, in our culture at least, it almost completely lacks sexual connotations; otherwise why would we teach our children how to do it to us, and how to do it to each other? And I am sure one of you will prove me wrong, but I have yet to find a nose fetishists's website on the net, which has such sites for practically everything else. But the main thing to remember about noses is that like every other body bit, they go in and out of fashion.
So don't laugh at my lovely pert nose. In 20 years' time, rhinoplasty clinics will be reporting a retroussé revival.
