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What makes a nose perfect?

It is thin, elegant and perfectly straight in profile. Of course, it is also symmetrical in every sense of the word. The perfect nose is a striking feature, something we see on top models and celebrities. It is no wonder that people choose to undergo surgery to copy it. But is this small and sweet nose really what everyone should aspire to?

If you study the human face like a sculpture or a painting, what you see is that the center of the face is the nose. It defines the character of the face, shapes the personality and beauty of the face. I want to improve noses. I do not want to change them.

According to the Hellenic Society of Plastic Surgery, almost 5500 rhinoplasty procedures are performed annually, making this procedure the most common facial plastic surgery, by far. While Botox and hyaluronic acid have steadily increased in popularity over the past decade, interest in rhinoplasty has remained steady. There are many reasons why people get rhinoplasty: some are medical in nature, such as correcting anatomical obstructions that can cause breathing difficulties. From a functional perspective, breathing is critical for every cell in the body. Beyond medical needs, there are also many people who get rhinoplasty for aesthetic results, a path to the Perfect Nose.

Most plastic surgeons do their best: straighten, lift, correct asymmetry, and reduce the overall shape of the nose to achieve that graceful, sharply curved shape. But striving for perfection is not without its downsides.

It often creates very mediocre or inferior rhinoplasty procedures taught in residency programs to create this particular nose, which is thin, sharply curved, slightly upturned, rather than doing an individual analysis of the patient. The perfect nose, as society usually defines it, is a myth and a harmful one.

Our faces are all completely and utterly unique. While the beauty industry has a long history of favoring false beauty standards, I prefer to honor my clients’ natural nasal structure, with a few subtle changes. 10% of the patients I see ask, “Can you file down that hump?” And I advise them, “No, I like your hump. That imperfection on your nose and the little hump on your nose is perfection for you.”

I follow the philosophy of ‘less is more.’ The idea is to make minimal intervention, leaving you with a nose that truly looks like you — but better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity or a student, I treat all of my patients’ noses as works of art, carefully shaped to fit their individual structure. If the doctor and patient can’t agree on what type of nose is best, I prefer not to perform the procedure. You can’t understand a patient’s desires when they don’t know what they want.

Today, we have more access to celebrities than ever before. Social media provides us with a constant stream of beauty content. The public is obsessed with understanding exactly what procedures the Kardashians have undergone to look the way they do, so they can seek out these treatments for themselves. In the plastic surgery industry, it is increasingly common for young people to come in for their session with a photo of their favorite celebrity and a request for Bella Hadid’s nose or Ioanna Bella’s lips. When we try to impose a celebrity’s features on our own faces, things often look inconsistent or unnatural. Especially when it comes to the nose.

While it may be tempting to bring in a photo of Vicky Kaia’s nose and ask your plastic surgeon to copy it exactly onto your face, the reality is that even if they were able to create a copy, her nose would look completely different on your face. It has to be in harmony with the other features. The nose is not an isolated structural element. I don’t operate that way with my patients, because I understand the dangers of giving people what they want without thinking.

When you try to create a completely new face through plastic surgery, the results are often obvious or exaggerated. I’m a proponent of small changes rather than complete transformations. My bet is to fool your friends. I’ll work on a patient and they’ll go back to their lives, and their friends won’t they know she has had rhinoplasty. I consider my success to be the delicate work I do.

While it may be tempting to eliminate every imperfection, it is worth preserving our personalities, our character and embracing our natural beauty. It is ultimately what suits us.