Friday, October 14, 2011

Excessive universalism

Imagine an article about "black hair" that never once used the terms "black" or "African-American." Well that's my take on this personal essay about whether or not the author should get a nose job. I mean, it took extensive research to find out that the author is Jewish, something she obviously goes to great lengths to keep secret. I mean, Jennifer Aniston, really? This would be like a black woman writing about hair-texture politics and using Nicole Kidman or Andie friggin' MacDowell as an example of that struggle. "So maybe I should get the operation [to fix an apparently genuinely deviated septum] but not get my nose reshaped. If seems nobler somehow. A boon for feminism, or for noses. Something." Taffy Brodesser-Akner, I don't know you, but I suspect you know perfectly well what that "something" is, and feminism, though not irrelevant (intersectionality!), is tangential. And of course I did the Google Image search - not that you asked for my opinion, except insofar as you wrote about your nasal self-image in the NYT Style section, your nose looks just fine.

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

Agreed. It's hard to imagine that someone who wasn't Jewish would agonize so much about it in public.

One wonders why the Times bothered to publish the article.