The “underdeveloped nasal brige” in particular, most noticable in the first pair of pictures, is a really strange judgement. It seems to me that even among white beauty contest contestants or what have you, that a deep dip there at the eyes, in profile view, is cute and young-looking.

Maybe these women are trying to look less “cute” and more “professional”. But I just don’t know. They only look barely different, and not for the better.

I’d always been self-conscious about my nose being generally too long and too tall (it got more proportional as I grew out of adolescence, but the self-consciousness remained) and was dumbfounded when my partner wanted to pet it like a toy while commenting on how “small” and “cute” it was. When I, very confused, pointed out that I had a positively enormous nose, my partner disagreed — HIS nose (which was, to my perception, adorable and tiny) was the “big” one, and he hated it. Eventually we discovered that Asian noses are judged “big” or “small” by -width- (as they tend not to differ so much in length) while more caucasoid noses in the West are judged based on how far they protrude from the face.

I have to say it’s improved our self-esteem to realize how arbitrary some of these “pretty/ugly” distinctions are. I’m not against rhinoplasty or most plastic surgery as a rule, but for a lot of the people pictured, the narrow elongated noses seem out of harmony with the rest of their faces (similar to what would result if my partner and I switched noses.) The exception might be the first woman pictured, but there’s no front view to compare.

You’re fucking kidding, right? Cuz, uh…plastic surgeons wouldn’t have WORK if they didn’t make people feel inferior…

Oh. DUH. I just followed your link. Yep, that explains it all…