Nicolette Taylor, 13 Year-Old Girl, Gets Nose Job To Avoid School Bullying (VIDEO)

After enduring online harassment and name-calling multiple times a week because of the shape of her nose, Nicolette Taylor, a 13 year-old from Long Island decided to take drastic action: plastic surgery, Nightline reported.

Although Taylor accepted teasing as a normal and unavoidable part of growing up, to her, social networking sites like Facebook made it 10 times worse.

“Everyone could see it,” the Nightline reported her saying. “All my friends could see it, all my new friends, and I didn’t want them saying things. Because gossip goes around, and it really hurts.”

With her parents' blessing, Taylor went under the knife ... and got a new nose.

Some time later, when the bandages were peeled off, the preteen cried from happiness and relief, the Daily Mail wrote.

Despite the many criticisms, Nicolette's father Rob Taylor told ABC news that his wife and his decision was one any parent would make.

"You send them to a good school, you'd buy them shoes. You'd get them braces, which we did. It's that kind of thing," he said.

Earlier this year, ABC news reported that plastic surgery to avoid being bullied was on the rise, and that in 2007 alone, around 90,000 teens went under the knife.

In April, people around their world expressed their outrage when 7-year-old Samantha Shaw got her ears pinned back to escape name calling and harassment.

In this case, Shaw's mother told reporters that the surgery was more to prevent her child from being bullied even more in the future.

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Comments

[wacado]

10:43 PM on 11/19/2011

HEr nose is still big

[James L Walker]

09:40 AM on 10/30/2011

Why can't people just be nice to one another?

[Mike Maes]

03:51 PM on 10/21/2011

I don't know if plastic surgery is the answer, but having taught middle schoolers for 17 years, I know that they can be horribly cruel to each other over the most minute, seemingly insignificant things. We have had a couple of young people locally commit suicide because of bullying, and I would rather allow a child to have surgery rather than face the bullying.

[wacado]

10:40 PM on 11/19/2011

Kids, adults, all people can be cruel.

[aquah04]

07:57 PM on 10/16/2011

people are beautiful the way they are
why are we teaching our children to let others make us hATE ourselves?
i would cry if my daughter wanted to do any type of plastic surgeory to herself

and i blame the media ,television, and so on for giving us pre-opinioned thoughts on what is beautiful and what is not

[Goldie Treasure]

11:38 PM on 10/15/2011

How about you teach your kid to stand up for them self and not pay attention to "bullies". Is she gonna get plastic surgery every time someone makes a comment about her looks? She'll look like Heidi Montag if she keeps running to the plastic surgeon every time someone hurts her little feelings. I really don't know what to say about some parents....

[alteredstory]

01:38 PM on 10/16/2011

Easier said than done.

[kvolovesart]

09:27 PM on 10/16/2011

Agreed...sadly, that is not realistic...kids are killing themselves over bullying...if it makes her happy and it stops the bullies...good for her...I would have done the same thing for my daughter...

[wacado]

10:40 PM on 11/19/2011

I agree.

[MNUSA]

09:24 PM on 10/14/2011

Nicolette had broken her nose twice. What her parents had done was to fix the damage. There's a big difference between fixing a nose and breast implants like you hear about some teenagers having done.

[savorlifesgifts]

12:59 PM on 10/14/2011

I'm parent of a daughter and had dealt with repeated bullying issues during her teen years and let me tell you it does affect a child's self image and does carry to their adult life. As much as you'd like to say it's good for their character and don't listen to the bullies, your kids may hear you but can not control the amount of the taunting that registers in their minds and affects their personality and self image. This is a topic that's come up with my friends that have kids and they are all of the same mindset on this. This story came across to me as a girl that broke her nose, was insulted and bullied for it until she was 13 and they made a decision to fix the physical issue that's causing the self image issues and bullying. How is this different than your child breaking a cheek during a fall or breaking off teeth that require surgery or fixing a scar from an accident on your childs face?? I fully support this family's decision to fix their daughter's broken nose, especially in light of the future years of saved insults and psyche damage. It just doesn't make sense to me to have your child endure the self image damage of some visible physical issue from an accident if you can at some point take some sort of action and do whatever is needed to fix it.

[am10]

03:55 PM on 10/14/2011

All the parents had to do was fix the nose, not offer up an excuse. While I agree being bullying can carry into adulthood, someone has to break the cycle. You need to stand up for yourself or you'll only keep running away.

[savorlifesgifts]

06:25 PM on 10/14/2011

I 100% agree you that you have to stand up for your self and have always preached this with my daughter and her friends and in getting involved in resolving it, as most parent do and I'm sure these people did and the parents of the 2 children that recently killed themselves did. In my daughters case it didn't go away unfortunately until she was out of high school.The problem is the bully mindset that needs to be broken and taken seriously as a major issue by society and stronger attention needs to be brought to it as well as stronger laws passed..especially the pack bully mindset. As for their offering up excuses, my thoughts are as with all stories, I'm sure we're only shown a piece of the reasoning behind this familie's decision for the surgery (the part that makes news), I'm sure the boring reasons like the breathing issues, infections,etc probably made it to the cutting room floor. I think we all agree on the important message society has to hear..Stop the Bullying!!

[Theresa Ruth Howard]

11:10 AM on 10/14/2011

I know It's hard to watch you child be bullied because of a physical trait, but there is something in me that says 13 is a bit too young to have plastic surgery in order to prevent being teased. 1st of all there is no guarantee that it will stop the bullying, they might just move on to another body part and then what? When I was in school there were numerous girls who came back from summer break looking just a bit different, so this is nothing new, I think what troubles me is the "why" . It's vastly different (young or older) to have something altered if they do it for themselves, but to do it to curry popularity or in hopes of preventing teasing to me isn't a good reason, it sends the message, if someone doesn't like something about you change it. What happens when a man tells her that her breasts aren't big enough? Where does she garner the strength to stand in her Self, and say" I like me the way that I am and if you don't like my face, don't look at it!" Waiting just a couple of years might have made a difference in the lesson this girl might have learned. As horrible as it is situations like this DO in fact build "character" creates a sense of self, growing is messy painful business. Why aren't we taking the bullies to task? they certainly could do with a little character building!!!

[kageeh886]

12:59 PM on 10/14/2011

Ms. Howard is absolutely right. When the nose is no longer an easy target for bullies, they will find another part of this girl to strike. It's not the bullied child's nose or any other perceived physical defect that invites the bullying behavior but rather something flawed or missing within the characters of the bullies themselves. Fixing Nicolette's nose will have no impact on the bully or the bullying behavior. Almost every teenaged girl believes she is ugly in one respect or another. In time, she learns to laugh off the bullies and to put their remarks in the permanent recycle bin where they belong. Over a lifetime of experiences, no one can ever fix everything someone else criticizes. Learning to live within the imperfect skin and bones we are born with and knowing they exist only to protect from the outside elements that which is the only important aspect about everyone -- what we do and how we do it -- is a large part of the wisdom we acquire growing up. Ironically, the more one is exposed to negative forces, the quicker and more expansively that wisdom grows.

Moreover, the most competent plastic surgeons know that procedures such as rhinoplasties (nose jobs) are best done when physical development and bone growth is complete; for most teens, that is not until around age 16. Everyone past their 20s can see the proof of that in their old photographs.

[alteredstory]

01:40 PM on 10/16/2011

This isn't the same as breast implants. The feature she was bullied about came from breaking her nose.

Twice.

It's correcting the aftermath of injury, not getting breast implants.

[Theresa Ruth Howard]

09:51 PM on 11/08/2011

That I understand, if she wanted to correct her nose because it was damaged sure, but the reason she and her parents give is because she was being bullied because of it. I am looking a bit deeper into what happens when her nose is perfect and the bullies pick another body part? what happens then?

[medicallibrarian]

10:56 AM on 10/14/2011

So if your child is bullied and people are calling him/her dumb, stupid, etc. do you then contact Dr. Frankenstein and have a brain transplant? I mean just how far do Americans go with this idiocy? Yes, bullying is real but quality health information is available to help. Here's your one-stop shopping on bullying from the National Library of Medicine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/bullying.html I hope this helps at least one person today.

[alteredstory]

01:40 PM on 10/16/2011

aaaaand again - not a breast implant - a surgical correction of injury-caused deformity.

[European1919]

08:35 AM on 10/14/2011

Yeah ... and all the turkeytittedones get augmentation to avoid bullying, too.

[cerebrogasm]

04:37 AM on 10/14/2011

Facebook again - should be renamed to Bullybook - or - no one is allowed to use it under the age of 35, I really wish it could be un-invented. "Facebook" - even the name tells you what its really about: the superficial.

Given that - and the fact that the onset of puberty used to be around 17 - and has marched backwards to around 9 - 11, kids, armed with what they see in the media, with no exposure to what goes into making an average face look stunning (I do, in my 20's I worked as an apprentice for a world renown fashion photographer - who showed me what lighting, makeup, posing, the right lens, the right settings, what can be done in the darkroom - and later - on a Scitex or eventually Photoshop can do - was an astounding revelation). Kids actually believe these media faces wake up in the morning looking like these images plastered everywhere - and use them as a reference point in judging others.

Nicolette - pre-nose job - looked better than some of my more successful models did when I was shooting for a NYC agency - a nose bump was an easy fix in post - but not an easy fix in a culture of escalating superficiality appearing at younger and younger ages (FB again). If she were my daughter - I'd do anything I could to minimize the pain that bullies use to crush a budding self-image.

[DianaLynn1967]

03:24 PM on 11/14/2011

Schools, (and, for that matter, Facebook) need to stop tolerating bullies. And society in general, starting with parents, needs to get better at spreading the message that people have the right to be themselves.

[xmasjoy25]

03:24 AM on 10/14/2011

Her facebook should have been monitored, shes still so very young. Her parents should have made sure only people she is friends with are on her list, obviously she was able to invite people she didnt know to be her friends. That in itself is a huge issue. The parents had no idea who their daughter was conversing with. The decision to alter her appearance was not made till after she felt she was being teased about her nose, so the person who keeps writing how it was broken from before, it obviously wasn't a concern or a medical need~ not until someone mentioned it, someone she allowed on her facebook account. Perhaps her parents should teach her the "remove from friends list" button~

[hazyafternoonsunshine]

02:07 AM on 10/14/2011

I hated my nose at that age. It was clear to me that my nose was "ethnic", which meant that I did not fit into the tight parameters of Seventeen beauty. I still don't. I still look ethnic, and I would never go under the knife to erase my ethnicity. On the other hand, I would go under the knife to fix the ravages of time. If I had the money. So, the more power to her if she wants to disavow her nose. I wish her every happiness. As for bullies, unfortunately, everyone still needs to figure out how to deal with them, and just because a person is attractive does not insulate them from bullying. Which she is sure to find out. So I image her character will have the opportunity it needs to grow despite the nose job.

[Valois]

12:09 AM on 10/14/2011

this is the kind of plastic surgery that I can support. A person has an aesthetic deformity so they correct it and they become happier.

[roch20]

11:59 PM on 10/13/2011

The survey questions are not fair, where's "it depends" choice? errr....