It was around this time, shortly before I turned twelve, that I was made painfully aware of the superficiality and obsession with appearance that consistently seems to contour our day-to-day lives. I was at a precarious age, one at which the seeds of my identity and self-worth were being sown. Up until then my sense of self had come from my internal make-up and the way in which I interacted with the world around me—exactly as it should have—but all that self-definition was about to undergo surgery.
