There's this thing I've noticed about Istanbul: Nose jobs are really popular. Most days, if I look closely, I can see a woman walking down the street with a bandage on her nose indicating that she's just come out of surgery. I call this badge the rhinoplaster. Sometimes I'll even see the recent recipients of nose jobs strolling in pairs. I learned that one of my friends has had a nose job. Very well done, I might add. Other forms of plastic surgery are also very much in demand, they tell me. I have it on good authority that every Turkish girl has a Brazilian wax. My limited experience does not refute the assertion.
Maybe this embrace of superficiality has something to do with Ataturk's project for Turkey: Out with the old, in with the new. That includes your nose, lady. In the light of the secularists' attempt to outlaw the AKP, the nose job assumes a new symbolic significance. More than a white flag raised to European conceptions of facial harmony, it becomes a badge of the project of modernization, the antithesis of the headscarf. In a battle between the rhinoplaster and the headscarf, who would win? Stay tuned. Maybe we'll find out this summer. It will be like a mudwrestling tournament with political significance.
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