The Joke About my Nose

What makes someone relatable? Is it when you both share connected feelings on some kind of inner turmoil? Is being relatable when you see something in them that you see in themselves? The term relatable I find to be such a powerful idea. I look and listen when I feel as though someone senses my pain, and walks the same path that I too am forced to walk. When I read a book I don’t want to hear the whines of sad boo woo girl. I want to relate, feel some sense of the emotions they feel connected with their words.  

I still continue to dislike this book but I’m still looking for something in which I can convey something more than the same tired emotionless woe’s of teenage girls. I found myself enjoying the, The Joke about my Nose, a story of a girl in Iran. It was one of the first monologues in the book in which it wasn’t done in poetry form and the character actually brought imagery and emotion into the text.

“That’s the thing about being pretty. There are so many things you have to not do to be pretty. I mean it becomes your life. Not doing things. I stay pretty. I do pretty. I don’t eat. I pick. I circle. I visit. I deprive. I starve. Because I do not eat, I do not have much energy. Food actually makes your brain function. So pretty people move slower. They can’t do too much else……. Funny people can eat all they want. I used to love food. You can enjoy it ‘cause funny people enjoy everything.” (page 66)

                I think this is sadly hilarious. Ever since this girl got a nose job, that she herself didn’t want, she feels as though she lost her edge. This girl felt as though her having a big nose allowed her to make jokes and not feel other pressures that come along with people who aren’t completely comfortable with themselves. For a very long time I thought I was the funny girl, that since I was could make people laugh that I didn’t have to worry about things like the fact I never wore new clothes. Once someone losses an identity that they assimilated themselves with for such a long time they feel as though now they don’t know their real strengths. This girl was always beautiful, but could hide behind her nose in order to keep being funny because that was the identity she felt comfortable with. When someone forcibly takes away your identity, like her parents took away her nose, the adjustment period sometimes saddens you the most.