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Nose jobs on the decline: Rhinoplasty becoming less popular among Jewish teenage girls

Winners by a nose: Barbra Streisand (l.) and "Glee" star Lea Michele have attained  show business fame while maintaining their natural profiles.
AP/James Devaney/WireImage
Winners by a nose: Barbra Streisand (l.) and “Glee” star Lea Michele have attained show business fame while maintaining their natural profiles.
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More Jewish girls are choosing not to dump their bump.

Once seen as a barrier to traditional beauty and the marker of an outsider, many are embracing their natural noses and rejecting plastic surgery, reports Tablet.

The number of nose jobs has dropped 37% since 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Rhinoplasty, while on the rise in Asian and African-Americans and Hispanics, is becoming less popular among modern Jews.

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More are embracing their ethnic heritage and feeling less pressure to blend in with a more “WASP-y” esthetic.

“There are other groups kind of taking the place of what Jews did a generation ago or two generations ago,” Dr. Ira Papel, a Baltimore plastic surgeon, said.

Interestingly, as more and more non-Jewish patients seek plastic surgery, they want to retain their racial character.

“The typical Asian patient who has eyelid surgery desires a wider, fuller eye that is natural looking to the Asian face and maintains an almond shape,” the ASPS wrote in 2010. “An African-American … may want to reduce the size of their nose to achieve a harmonious balance with other facial features, but is not seeking a nose that is more European.”

According to Bernice Schrank, author of the academic paper “Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Race,” many actors and actresses get their noses fixed to “pass” as a member of the dominant race — and play non-ethnic roles.

The author cites Jewish actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s changed looks as part of her success in playing non-ethnic New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw in the smash hit series “Sex and the City.”

“Glee” star Lea Michele has said that she resisted the urge to streamline her nose, despite Hollywood pressure.

“How many managers told me, ‘Get a nose job. You’re not pretty enough’?” she told Harper’s Bazaar last August. “But I proved them wrong.”

While there seems to be no end to the celebrities who get their noses fixed, the trend may be waning for Jewish girls.

“It’s because of increased ethnic pride and a decreased desire to stop looking Jewish and blend in,” Emory University physician and anthropologist Melvin Konner told Tablet. “Which is why rhinoplasty was invented.”