A new piece in TNR, Iranian Chic, highlights the fact that nose jobs are all the rage in the Islamic Republic. A more detailed article notes:
One prominent Tehran plastic surgeon says his patients include the daughters of senior Islamic clerics. Its use in the Islamic republic was officially sanctioned by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's late leader and father of the Islamic revolution. He gave the go-ahead after being consulted by a religious figure whose daughter was due to be operated on by Iran's leading plastic surgeon, Mohammed Abidipour.
One of the main reasons offered for this fixation on facial perfection is that in Iran women can show their faces, but not their hair or figure (at least theoretically). So there is a natural tendency to fixate on the one region of the body which is a visible. Of course, that begs the question why nose jobs are popular with males in Iran as well. Additionally, I recently went to a Nowruz celebration with Kambiz, and the relatively liberal Iranian Americans unnecumbered by onerous morals legislation (head-scarf to cleavage ratio was 1:50) were obviously in love with plastic surgery too as evidenced by the presence of Latoya-Jackson-Face. Below the fold a video report on the trend.
