It never hit me more in the face (no pun intended) than when my last headshot photographer turned to me in his thick Boston accent and said, “never get a nose job”. It was hard to tell through his tough east-coaster demeanor if everything he said to me was suppose to come across as insulting or not, but ultimately I knew it was all just a manner of speaking. I responded with a simple, “Oh, I won’t”. A response that I once would not have had.
Through the awkward ages of 9-13, I was pretty convinced that I would get a nose job. Coming from Jewish decent on my mother’s side, I genetically attributed what one would call “the Jew nose”. My brother would tease me till I cried (which sorry bro you got it too),
and boys would call me ugly. I decided that I was not going to let those comments affect my self esteem- but that did not necessarily make me less self conscious. What led me to this realization was that in about 90 percent of all my acting/musical theatre classes (at the AMDA in NYC/LA), the one note I kept getting from all my teachers was “your hair is always in your face” or “you are hiding behind your hair- I want you to pull it back”. I was not as confident as I thought I was. Being an actress, there is no such thing as hiding. You have to be real, accepting, and vulnerable (all things I love about the art).
As I matured and grew into my features, I started to become less self conscious of it all, and reached the conclusion that I could never let myself undergo surgery even if I wanted too- so I was stuck. But being stuck became the most beautiful lesson for me. It taught me that I decide the definition of my features and what I decide is what people will see. Is there a part of yourself that you’ve always been ashamed of or unhappy with? To come to peace with yourself, the advice I would give is that you need to have a positive perspective by attaching new meaning to whatever it is. It takes some self discovery, but once you find it it becomes liberating understanding- that self worth is more than an appearance one should hold themselves to. For me, I’ve decided that my nose is the extension of my ethnicity, and that it brings me a beautiful kind of uniqueness. I view it as a symbol of my strength, and I’m certain that Hollywood will hire me because of it. Now I wear my hair slicked back, out of my face on most days and let that nose of mine do its thing. Its BIG thing.