June 02, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 16, 1428

TEHRAN: 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 US 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 specialising 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.—Reuters