Who Has the Worst Nose?

Two men and I were watching a movie together in which a female character lifted her arms and had hairy armpits, whereas the two men quickly created far too much havoc about how unappealing that was; I mean they seemed merciless. I told them I once went for several years without shaving anything and they both acted as if they would have vomited if they had known me back then. I did stop shaving for two or three years, at one point in time. Body hair didn't really bother me at that time. I thought (and still think) that it is someone's aesthetic prerogative to prefer no body hair or to let things grow more naturally without being condemned. Unfortunately, some women and men seem to go out of their way to condemn people with different styles then them or people they find unattractive. Back to the movie woman with the pit hair, the two grossed out men made a comment along the lines of, 'I don't know which is worse, her hairy armpits or her scarecrow nose!" I didn't really understand what the men were blathering about. I thought she was an attractive woman, especially her face. I had not thought her nose was all that big, but then I began to think, 'My nose is bigger than hers...'

We seem to have some kind of nose issues in my immediate family. On more than one occasion, my various family members will have gotten together and we will be seated around a table, eating a meal together, when suddenly a conversation will ensue regarding Who Has the Worst Nose amongst the six of us. Everybody will contend for this dubious honor, trying to get everybody else to agree that his/her nose is the most problematic of the six noses at the table. This conversation is not an isolated incident; it has unfolded quite a few times. I have not always had an enormous issue with my nose; it is not a gigantic proboscis. However, my nose certainly isn't tiny (in fact, it's nowhere near small) and nor is it very straight. It's a longer and somewhat more crooked than garden variety nose and sometimes I think it looks witch-like. Sometimes this bothers me, especially the crookedness.

According to my mom, when I was first born, my nose was so crooked that it almost appeared to be smashed against one side of my face, but shortly following my birth, my nose righted itself into a perfect little entity about which no legitimate complaints could be voiced. However, as I grew to be around junior high age, slowly and sneakily, my evil witch nose started crooking slightly to one side again. For years, this slight crookedness was nothing drastic. Indeed, I probably would not have even noticed that my nose was slightly crooked until my mom pointed it out to me. After that, I became somewhat obsessed with the matter - inspecting and analyzing my nose from different angles in the mirror, poring over photos of myself and placing my hand over first one side of my face and then the other to determine if more of my nose was on one side than the other (and it was). This sordid little situation was certainly not alleviated when I was in high school and my mom and I were seated across from each other at a restaurant when seemingly out of the blue, she suddenly said something like, 'You know, if you ever decided you wanted to get a nose job..." Eek!

For a while, I somehow managed to get over my nose-related obsession (or else I shifted my obsession to other body parts), although I still had a lingering nervousness about the resiliency (or lack thereof) of nose cartilage. Every once in a while, I would think something like, "Why did I choose to get my nose pierced? Did I want to draw attention to its insidious crookedness?' I guess its insidious crookedness was not bothering me as much when I made that nose piercing choice in my early 20s. More recently though, I seem to have become more unhappy with my nose again.

Is it becoming even bigger and more crooked and more misshapen as I grow older? If I look at one side of my face, I think it looks okay, but if I look at the other side, I think it looks borderline awful. I'm not a fan of cosmetic surgery; I would much rather except my physical features as they are. Yet I must admit that instead of feeling more confident, happy about and pleased with myself as I get older, I seem to be reverting to my past insecurity. How should I end this? Should I hack off my own nose? Probably not. I think I should work harder on focusing on more positive brain power. Of course some things are easier said than done.