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.
Agreed. It's hard to imagine that someone who wasn't Jewish would agonize so much about it in public.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders why the Times bothered to publish the article.