The paradigm of the “typically Jewish” nose originates in the craniological studies of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). Blumenbach claimed to have evidence that Jews had an especially prominent nasal bone. Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), a Nazi schoolbook published by the Stürmer Verlag in 1938, provides an example of how such anti-Semitic clichés about body shapes were spread. It was printed in a first edition of 60,000 copies.

The anti-Semitic cliché of a “Jewish nose” is also reflected in nineteenth-century walking sticks. Not every walking stick with a nose-shaped handle was meant to portray a Jew, even if that is why these particular sticks were acquired by the collector.

In 1962 Andy Warhol created three versions of the painting Before and After based on an illustrated advertisement for cosmetic nose surgery. It shows two profiles of the same woman before and after plastic surgery. Deborah Kass reproduced Warhol’s double image and combined it with a detail from the scene in which Cinderella slips her perfectly proportioned foot into a glass slipper. In doing so, she criticizes not only common clichés of beauty, but also the obsession with beauty in general.