Beauty is in the nose of the beholder

The nose that baffles and consistently amazes the people of the Philippines.

My nose, by far, is most often the topic of conversation when I first meet Filipinos. I walk down the street, catching stares like a Hollywood star, and people will gesture a slight slope with their fingers and say, “Wow, your nose is so pointed.” Filipinos always tell me that my nose is “very high” and that they wish they could have just half of my nose. A distinguished woman who I had just met even asked me if she could touch my nose and was consequently amazed at how rigid it was.

I think I can safely say, Filipinos are obsessed with noses. In my five months of living here in the Philippines, it seems to me that beauty is defined by two things: your nose and the color of your skin. When it comes to the nose, many Filipinos complain about their flat noses, wishing they had a bit more definition in the nasal region. A straight, pointed nose is highly desired and more characteristic of the historic Malay and Spanish settlers of the Philippines. Now, when you talk about skin, we've got a Snow White complex going on here…ya know, who’s the fairest of them all? The media glorifies fair skin, and I doubt you can find a commercial or advertisement with anyone of a darker complexion. Thus, if you want to be beautiful, you've got to be white, creating quite the market for skin whitening products, ranging from soaps to deodorants to feminine whitening agents...it’s out of control.

Whenever the issue of noses or white skin comes up, I love to tell Filipinos that in America it’s the opposite. Some Americans will pay thousands of dollars to make their nose smaller and less pointy or “high." Also, in America, we think tan is beautiful, and people will pay to have their skin spray-tanned or artificially bronzed. When I tell Filipinos this, the look on their faces (especially young girls) is priceless, especially when I point to their skin and say, "that’s what Americans want!"

Before coming to the Philippines, I never really thought about the cultural differences in “beauty.” I thought there was a certain universal beauty when it came to something as simple as a nose, but I've come to realize how silly we all are about the matter. Really, what’s in a nose?

As One Direction so eloquently puts it:

Being the way that you are is enough [...]
You don't know you're beautiful! 
That's what makes you beautiful!