Rosalie Crawford Rosalie's Writings

I heard this week that people are having inappropriate nose jobs due to their noses appearing 30 per cent larger in selfies than they really are. I thought about this and took a selfie myself, just to see.

Shock! Horror! Consternation! It's true - my nose is huge. I checked my Instagram posts and there it is – big-nose-itis.

Some days I feel like I'm starring in the musical: ‘Nose Wipe and the Seven Warts'.

Is my smartphone a portable funhouse mirror or is my nose really this colossal lump staring back at me from my Facebook profile?

I really need to believe it's just camera distortion.

Those of us without selfie sticks take selfies from about 12 inches away, whereas a photo taken from the standard distance of about five feet appears to have no distortion. I'm in such shock about my nasal situation that I can't mentally re-twig that into the appropriate metric measurement.

Weirdly, and ultimately shooting themselves in their collective feet, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery have collected the results of a survey and found that 55 per cent of facial plastic surgeons treated patients who 'want to look better in selfies” in 2017.

That's a 13 percent increase from 2016.

Why would they want to point this out?

Won't they lose business?

A friend told me that the face doesn't grow into its nose until your mid-to-late 20s, therefore a nose job, if required, should be a 30th birthday present to oneself.

Apparently, self-snapped pictures are becoming a public health risk.

Smartphones are proliferating like science fiction magazines in the 1920s, resulting in a nearly 200 percent increase in elective cosmetic procedures since 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

I don't know what they're complaining about - after all they get paid pretty well to do more and more rhinoplasties.

But I'm not keen to push my nose into their business.

Speaking of rhinos, it's interesting to see that Simon Bridges was asked this week what his favourite animals are. It's so satisfying to see the important questions asked - those that are relevant to our lives.

I heard he picked the red panda and the leopard. I have no idea what this means, politically. It probably means he likes pandas and leopards.

I checked out his selfies but Bill English and Steven Joyce, our departing politicians, seem to have larger noses.

Politicians doing selfies anasal me, I mean, don't they nose we've moved on to the ‘ussie' – a photo with others? They should dive right in.

Concerning diving, someone did a nose dive right over the rails into Wairoa River, after escaping their burning car on the bridge. How's that for high drama?

A screenwriter couldn't have asked for a better location for an action movie.

The culprit gave himself up after a boat with police on-board took to the river.

Unfortunately, traffic had to halt and vehicles were lined up nose-to-tail, probably backed up all the way to the Omokoroa intersection, which isn't anything unusual as most days it's a daily crawl into the city.

Nobody knows traffic woes like those who truly know - the drivers.

It can be a mindless time of repressing mild to moderate road rage or, as I did recently, don a large Mexican hat, turn on the radio to ‘loud', wind down the windows and sing madly.

No one really notices, so if nobody knows, did it really happen? Did I really let out my inner crazy horse? If you have all the gear to safely execute it, you could set up a dashboard cam and record your own karaoke.

Maybe don't attempt this on a state highway.

Of course, then you're faced once again with 'is my nose too big, too small, too weird looking, too freckly?” A lump grew on the side of mine when I was about 12 and it's never gone away.

I always thought it would come in handy one day if I was ever playing one of the villainous characters in The Wizard of Oz.

So when is it appropriate to have a nose job? I did wonder once why the soccer ball was getting bigger. And then it hit me. Ok, so it's a nosey question.

Kind of like ‘what did he know and when did he know it', a variation of Howard Henry Bake's immortal line about Watergate.

This old question has started circulating online in the wake of President Trump's unprecedented staff resignations.

Questions are also circulating about stink bugs arriving on ships from Japan. This bug could cost our economy up to $3.6 billion, which is causing a huge stink.

They could destroy our fruit and vege crops, like kiwifruit and grapes.

We can't look down our noses at this problem. It's a real blow and snot funny that a stink bug could affect our lives like this.

So what do you call a nose with no body?

Nobody knows.