Iranian women get a nose for western look

by Colin Barraclough
The Sunday Times, London
March 28, 1998

Tehran: TAKE a close look at Neda Ebadi's nose and you can just make out the small scar left by surgery five years ago. Although she has lived in France since the Iranian revolution in 1979, she chose a clinic in her native Tehran rather than a Paris hospital to have a piece taken off the tip and some cartilage removed from the bridge.

"All my friends were teasing me about my nose," said Ebadi, 38. "They made me feel awful. Even my mother wanted me to have it fixed."

Cosmetic surgery of all sorts, from face-lifts to breast enlargements, is booming in Iran, but nose jobs are by far the most popular. In Tehran alone, about 60 surgeons perform 300 operations a week. At £800 - compared with up to £6,000 in Europe or America - the operation is relatively cheap.

The curved Persian nose is now considered unsightly within Iran. Surgery has become so common that an original nose is almost a rarity in affluent circles.

"I didn't want to change mine," said a Tehran socialite in her thirties. "But people look at me now and say, 'Poor thing, she doesn't have the money to get hers done'."

Dr Mahmoud Salehi, one of Iran's leading facial reconstruction surgeons who trained in East Grinstead, West Sussex, said his patients included many returning émigrés. "I did all the mothers 20 years ago. Now they bring their daughters to me," said Salehi, relaxing in his private clinic in central Tehran.

The popularity of plastic surgery is a sign of growing westernisation among women in Iran, a process accelerated by the election last year of President Muhammad Khatami, whose female support helped him to defeat his conservative rival.

Although hejab - or covering - is still compulsory for women, they can now drive cars, run their own businesses and divorce their husbands. A growing number have opted for a career in politics: women occupy 13 of the 270 seats in parliament.

"Iran is a very different country now from the 1980s," said Farideh Farhi, a political analyst. "Khatami's election was a watershed."

Related links

* Iran News
* Complete list of Iranian online media
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