Barbra Streisand is opening up about how she resisted the pressure to get a nose job.
Throughout her career, the 81-year-old singer and actress received criticism about her facial features, specifically the "bump" on her nose. She opened up about the constant comments in her new memoir, "My Name Is Barbra."
"I had already been told by several people that I should get a nose job and cap my teeth. I thought, Isn’t my talent enough? A nose job would hurt and be expensive," she wrote. "Besides, how could I trust anyone to do exactly what I wanted and no more? I liked the bump on my nose, but should I consider a minor adjustment ... just straighten it slightly at the bottom and take a tiny bit off the tip?"
But getting a nose job would risk alterations to her voice, and as a singer, that was a risk she was not willing to take.
"No. It was too much of a risk. And who knew what it might do to my voice? Once a doctor told me I had a deviated septum ... maybe that’s why I sound the way I do," Streisand wrote. "Besides, I liked long noses ... the Italian actress Silvana Mangano had one, and everyone seemed to think she was beautiful."
She expressed, "Sometimes it felt like my nose got more press than I did."
Thinking back to her 1964 cover story in Time magazine, Streisand recalled being upset over how the writer described her face.
"In the cover story in Time magazine, the writer said, 'This nose is a shrine' (Sounds good!) Then he went on, 'The face it divides is long and sad, and the look in repose is the essence of hound.' (Not so good.)"
She wrote that she wished the words didn't affect her, but to this day, she still finds them insulting.
"Even after all these years, I’m still hurt by the insults and can’t quite believe the praise," she wrote.
In her book, Streisand reflected on a time when she had her nose photoshopped without her knowledge.
When shooting the cover for her 1974 album "The Way We Were," she noticed something "strange" about her facial features. She was working with Columbia Records at the time.
"I gave the shot to the art department at Columbia, and when they sent the finished cover back to me, I took one look and asked, 'What happened here? Something’s strange.'
"Well, it turned out that someone had taken off the bump on my nose! I guess they thought I’d be pleased, but I actually like that bump," she wrote. "That bump and I have been through a lot together."
Streisand told the art director to return her nose to its original shape.
"It’s mine, and I said to the art director, 'If I wanted a nose job, I would have gone to a doctor. Please put the bump back.'"
TODAY.com has reached out to Columbia Records for comment.
While the shape of her nose was a topic of conversation throughout her career, she made it as a movie star, despite not fitting the "conventional image" of a Hollywood star at the time.
"I became a movie star, even though I didn’t fit the conventional image ... me with my asymmetrical face, my notable nose ... and my big mouth."
