Modest in dress, rich Iranians pay for nice noses

By Fredrik Dahl and Caren Firouz

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians flouting Islamic street dress codes may risk being hauled in by police for questioning by "psychologists", but the frequent sight of bandaged faces from cosmetic surgery raises not so much as an official eyebrow.

For a visitor to Tehran, the number of young women -- as well as some men -- sporting post-surgery gauze on their faces is striking. It prompted one U.S. newspaper last year to label Iran a "nose-job nation".

"Nose surgery is very popular," said Iranian plastic surgeon Nabiollah Shariati, as veiled women filled his waiting room eager to go under the knife. "It makes people feel good about life and themselves."

Business is brisk for hundreds of doctors specializing in this highly visible trend in the conservative Islamic state, as nose and other facial surgery enhances the only features an Iranian woman is not obliged to conceal.

More commonly associated with the rich and famous in Hollywood, surgery is in demand among trendy and well-off Iranians keen to correct perceived flaws in their looks.

Speaking in the green marble-floored office of his private clinic in an affluent part of Tehran, Shariati said he carried out two or three nose operations a day, or 3,000 during 16 years in the profession.

"Every year the figures go up," he said. "Compared with the United States and European countries they are much higher in Iran."

This may seem a contradiction in a country where since the 1979 Islamic revolution sharia law has discouraged women from seeking to attract the attention of the opposite sex.

Besides covering their hair and bodies with the Muslim headscarf and loose clothing, such as the head-to-toe black chador, women who use heavy make-up are frowned on and those who transgress modesty rules can be fined, lashed or jailed.

But a senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Mahdi Hadavi, said Islam allowed facial surgery as long as it did not harm the person: "It is permitted based on Islamic rules," he said. "Being beautiful is not something prohibited in Islam."

NOSE REDUCTION

Shariati said the authorities had not raised any objections to his line of work, and he believes the Islamic dress code actually helps explain why nose surgery has become so popular in the Middle Eastern country.

"Because of the hijab women have to wear the face becomes the most prominent part of the body," he said.

Reducing the size of the nose was the most common request: "Iranian noses are on average a little bit larger than European and Asian noses."

One of his patients, Arezoo Abbasi, complained of her big nose as she prepared for the hour-long procedure dressed in a blue hospital-style gown.