The Picking of Noses, and Other Such Choices

Nowadays, it's the nose.

My wife's younger sister, Min-young - now in high school and thus subject to all the slings and arrows of adolescent self-hatred - hates her schnoz, thinks it's ugly, and is just certain that plastic surgery is the answer to all of her life's teenage ills. Of course, she also sees no reason why her parents shouldn't pony up the money for such a makeover, as though my in-laws wipe their asses with 10,000 KRW notes.

"Some of my classmates' parents have paid for them to have nose jobs," said Min-young.

"That's because their parents think they're ugly," I said. "Yours don't."

After all, any parent who encourages their daughter, through funding, to seek cosmetic surgery might as well just come right out and say it: "You know, you're right, 'homely' really is too nice a word for that face of yours. Here's the money."

I went to the cupboard, got a paper shopping bag, and handed it to Min-young.

"Here, cut a couple eye holes in that and wear it when you leave the house. No one will ever see your nose and it's a helluva lot cheaper than a rhinoplasty.

As it happens, though...

In addition to the Joong-Ang, my daily copy of the International Herald Tribune also usually includes a pestilent fashion section, always cluttering up the middle of my paper and clinging to at least one page of the business section, such that I can't just remove and discard the unwanted pages. Most days, I just grumble to Na Young over my coffee cup and move on past the Style section, but today the above picture caught my eye. It seems that designer Junya Watanabe has come up with a way to make money off those people who don't like their nose, but who like the knife even less (image above).

Someone ought to direct him to my sister-in-law's high school.



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Notes

Photo from Reuters