My Jewish Nose
by Lisa Jervis

My mother thought a nose job was a good idea. See, she hadn't wanted one either. But when she was sixteen, her parents demanded that she get that honker "fixed," and they didn't take no for an answer. She insists that she's been glad ever since.

Even my father is a believer. He says that without my mother's nose job, my sister and I wouldn't exist. My father's a guy who thinks that dressing up means wearing dark sneakers; that pants should be purchased every 20 years; and that haircuts should cost ten dollars and take as many minutes. But he cared about the nose? Whatever.

What's the motivation for that kind of pressure? Can it be for all the strides made against racism and anti-Semitism, Americans still want to expunge their ethnicity from their looks as much as possible? I think that anyone who opts for a nose job today (or who pressured her daughter to do so) would say that the reason is to look "better" or "prettier." But when we scratch the surface of what "prettier" means, we find that we might as well be saying "whiter" or "more gentile."

But in a larger sense, Judaism is the ony identity in which culture and religion are supposedly bound closely: If you're Irish and aren't a practicing Catholic, you can still be fully Irish; being Buddhist doesn't specify a race or an ethnic identity. African Americans can practice any religion, and it doesn't make them any less black. Color doesn't have much to do with it. In fact, the question of whether or not Jews are white can be answered in as many different ways as there are people who have an opinion on the topic.

Lisa Jervis is the editor and publisher of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, now entering its eighth year of publication. Her work has appeared in Bust, HUES, Ms., Salon, Mother Jones and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the co-editor of Young Wives Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership (Seal, 2001).