The Black Nose
“I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils” — Beyoncé off the song Formation from the Lemonade album
You some ugly child/
There was a curse on your family and it fell on you/
You some ugly child
Yo hair so nappy
Who’s your pappy?
You some ugly child
Lyrics from Sam Theard’s You Ugly
These words are indelibly etched into my memory. My grandmother would sing this to me and laugh when I was a toddler. Of the myriad things I was teased about growing up — my complexion, my weight, my nappy hair, the worst of them all was undoubtedly and unequivocally my nose. It’s right in the center of my face after all.
I have a Black nose. By Black nose, for all those that don’t know, I mean a broad and prominent nose — a facial feature typically associated with African descendants. It’s the kind of nose that will subject you to extreme ridicule by pretty much any other race, but by other members of the Black community, especially. The Black nose is indeed the least desirable of all the African attributes. We are now engaged in the age of cultural appropriation. Blackfishing is a whole thing — white ladies in their best Beyoncé drag posing on Instagram and twerking on TikTok for likes has become quite the phenomenon of late. Yet even in this neo-imperialist hijack of all things Black being displayed all throughout pop culture by whitefolk and other races (see Awkwafina pre-Farewell fame), one thing we absolutely don’t see is white women flocking to their doctors to have their noses widened — asses and lips, yes, but that narrow nose can stay.
My mother told me a story about how my grandmother’s husband, Henry, a belligerent alcoholic, who’d been banished to my nana’s attic prior to my birth, came downstairs once in a drunken stupor to greet me when I arrived from the hospital. He took one look at me and instructed my mother to pinch my nose everyday 10 times firmly and in rapid succession to mold my nose to optimal narrowness. He got really close to my face in an effort to demonstrate how to effectively diminish the broadness of my nose. My mother was horrified, shielding my face as she swatted him away the entire time. Once she left me in my highchair to attend to some other thing and, in her periphery noticed my little feet flailing. When she looked up, Henry was at it! Suffocating me in an effort to mold me into the likeness of narrow righteousness. Yes, I was light-skinned with gray eyes, but that nose! No. Little did she know, she would be protecting me from such attacks all throughout my childhood in one way or another, until I figured out how to do it on my own.
Because of the ridicule I incurred throughout my childhood, I wanted more than anything to get a nose job. It wasn’t until I entered my first wave of Black consciousness that came after that Black History 101 at Hunter College, the deadprez and Black Star albums along with all the Black Panther autobiographies I’d charged myself with reading, that I’d come to love the center of my face. As early as I can remember, my nose has been the ammunition mine enemies would load their weapons up with to destroy me. It was my greatest imperfection among family members and classmates alike. At recess, I was often called a Troll doll, Gonzo, KRS-One was hurled at me every now and again, I mean you name it and that’s what they called me.
My mother, stalwart guardian of my self-esteem, would tell me I was beautiful. Reflecting on these heartfelt conversations, I realize I was thinking she had to say that because she was my mother, and really didn’t let what she was saying seep into my psyche. Moreover, there were so many outside forces telling me otherwise. Aside from family members and classmates, there were the covers of every beauty magazine, the actresses deemed beautiful by society all converging upon the bridge of my bulbous nose in vitriol and condemnation. There were also the cartoons. I’d wake up early and sit in front of my television tuned into animations where the Blackfolk were drawn with noses shaped all wide and greasy and in such a hideous and unappealing manner as to make one never want to have one.
My mother, stalwart guardian of my self-esteem, would tell me I was beautiful. Reflecting on these heartfelt conversations, I realize I was thinking she had to say that because she was my mother, and really didn’t let what she was saying seep into my psyche. Moreover, there were so many outside forces telling me otherwise. Aside from family members and classmates, there were the covers of every beauty magazine, the actresses deemed beautiful by society all converging upon the bridge of my bulbous nose in vitriol and condemnation. There were also the cartoons. I’d wake up early and sit in front of my television tuned into animations where the Blackfolk were drawn with noses shaped all wide and greasy and in such a hideous and unappealing manner as to make one never want to have one.
To wit, we have seen many people of color of note ditch their Black noses for more pinched ones once a certain level of celebrity has been achieved throughout their careers. Indeed, entire Black families from the Jacksons to the Braxtons have annexed their broad noses to that holy narrow terrain. One can go to their favorite search engine to uncover all the befores and afters of Blackfolk sent to plastic surgeons in a self-deprecating exorcism to have their noses whittled down within an inch of their lives, sometimes to the detriment of their ability to breathe. Here is where you would google ‘Michael Jackson nose tent’ for a glimpse into how deep this rabbit hole can go.
My nose was my greatest imperfection among family members and classmates alike. I will never forget one of the grossest offenses ever made against my nose. I was in the sixth grade, standing on a line of other sixth graders awaiting entry into class as another period was to commence. Cassandra was across the hall. Her nose was a doozy as well, larger than mine by considerable width and spread across her face as my grandmother would say. The span of her nose exceeded the width of her mouth, which is a good barometer for broadness. She was in the 7th, I believe and arguing with an 8th grader named Keson, playing the dozens. Keson was dark-skinned and buck-toothed so there was a lot for Cassandra to work with there. Whatever she said to him must have cut deep because he shot back with an insult so damaging that both she and I felt the sting for the remainder of the trimester. “Oh yeah?! Well your nose is so big, you make Devyn’s nose look small!” Laughter erupted at a rate and volume of which I had never seen. I couldn’t believe it. I had absolutely nothing to do with this. Why was my name being called? Talk about two birds, one stone. That moment would reverberate through any argument I had for the remainder of my attendance at St. Teresa’s. I later heard that Cassandra got her nose done.
I was talking to a colleague and the subject of passing came up. The act of passing in Black America is an outward denial of one’s African ancestry in an effort to assimilate and/ or gain some of the many privileges enjoyed by white people. My colleague, who is also Black, has a biracial son who looks completely white — a spitting image of his father for sure. I was sharing with her that I’d asked my grandmother once if she’d ever considered passing. Although we have extremely light skin in common, my grandmother had straight hair, a narrow nose and thin lips. She was of the Lena Horne variety of Black woman and nothing at all in her features like me.
My colleague smirked and said, “well we know that you wouldn’t have been able to pass, not with that nose that you got.” She grinned and carried on about how annoying it was that onlookers often perceived her to be her swirly baby’s nanny and not his mother. It was all so very Imitation of Life.
Her passive-aggressive provocation was the kind that would have sent me into a blind rage as an adolescent. Now, not so much. I gave her a chuckle and continued the conversation. Acknowledgment of my nose’s broadness is no longer anything I consider to be an insult — not now.
“I won’t let you shoot the nose off my Pharoah.” — Beyoncé
My grandmother once told me I was pretty from my eyes up and lips down — that sliver in between, an absolute disaster, remedied only by the fact that I had hazel eyes. God had a sense of humor in making me, she said. She’d later come to tell me that I grew into my nose as if all other facial features along with the powers of puberty convened on how they could resolve this tremendous blemish on my beauty and came to an agreement on resolution unbeknownst to me.
With knowledge comes power. In his 2005 documentary film, Mehrdad Oskouei, investigates rhinoplasty in his native Iran which statistically conducts the most procedures on the nose in the world. Various women go on to tell stories like mine about how their noses were deemed ugly, even in a stringent Muslim country where their faces are covered anyway. Many of the men in the documentary complain that the Iranian nose is a God-given characteristic of their people, condemning the popularity of rhinoplasty. As I exhume these bodies from my past, reflecting on how societal ideals around beauty continue to fluctuate towards the African aesthetic as caricatures of our Blackest selves, I imagine a joyous day when my Jackson 5 nostrils will be met with hails of applause and be added to the long list of things colonizers covet. For what a grand day that would be indeed. Until then, I’ll be keeping the contour to a minimum and breathing easy.
