NEW #NONOSEJOB TREND ON TIKTOK EMBRACES UNFILTERED BEAUTY

BEAUTY culture has, for years, dictated a singular message: fix it, hide it, smooth it out.

- VUYILE MADWANTSI

The implied solution for a prominent nose, a soft chin, or a face that deviates from filtered online images, we are told, is simple: surgery.

But a new wave is stirring on TikTok: young people (and older ones too) proudly declaring, “I’ve never had a nose job and I love my nose exactly as it is.”

Under hashtags like #Nonosejob, users are posting side profiles, closeups, and personal stories celebrating features that just a few years ago many felt pressured to “correct”.

So, after decades of Vogue covers and celebrity red carpets shaping one narrow idea of what's “beautiful”, can we really unlearn all of this? We cannot pretend we woke up worrying about our noses on our own.

From Hollywood's golden age to the filters on Instagram, the same cookie-cutter face, slim nose, sharp jawline, symmetrical everything has been sold to us as the gold standard.

A quick scroll through the covers of Vogue, Elle or Cosmopolitan over the decades shows who got to be “beautiful”: mostly white, mostly slim, mostly fitting the same mould.

Features from other cultures, such as broad noses, wider faces and strong jawlines, were edited out or covered up. This narrow standard does more than fill up our feeds; it affects how we feel about ourselves.