I’ve been fooling around on YouTube looking at video renditions of favourite songs, interviews with favourite novelists and the like. After a while I noticed a certain theme emerging. A lot of the women had striking noses.

When I say ‘striking’ I don’t mean great hooters a la Cyrano de Bergerac. I just mean NOT the cutesy little button noses that are de rigeur in modern clichés of feminine ‘beauty’. I started off with old favourite Patti Smith. There’s a famous anecdote about the David Mamet play ‘Cowboy Mouth’ in which Smith and Sam Shephard starred: the parts were said to have been written for ‘a man who looked like a coyote and a woman who looked like a crow’. Now that’s a bit mean. Patti Smith, especially in her youth, has an unconventional look but it’s a character-filled face, partly because of her strong nose. ‘Strong is not a euphemism here. It’s just a bit more prominent than the sweet little noses, no doubt surgeon-made, sported by celebs, actresses, tv presenters and all the other images of female good looks that one encounters in the media.

The Patti interview took place at Charleston, the home of Bloomsbury artists Clive and Vanessa Bell, the latter the sister of novelist Virginia Woolf. I searched for her next, because I’d heard there was a recording of VW’s voice (there is and it’s a very upper crust voice). Now there’s another strong-nosed woman and quite beautiful with it, in her youth. In the course of my YouTube roamings I also encountered the lead singer of Pentangle, Jacqui McShea, and watched an interview with Janis Joplin. Normal noses – but definitely substantially bigger than any of the beauty icons of the present day.

I won’t go through the whole list; I’ll just offer my conclusion. Female beauty is of course defined by youth. Blondes with button nose are modelled on six year olds, not even teenagers. But how bland are most of these beauties? Bring back the nose! Ban cosmetic rhinoplasty! Noses add character and character is beautiful. Button noses belong on babies.