that she had beautiful almond-shaped eyes, but that was probably just something
people said because her nose was too small and her mouth was a bit too big. And her
ears were much too close to her eyes. Worst of all was her straight hair, which it was
impossible to do anything with. Sometimes her father would stroke her hair and call
her "the girl with the flaxen hair," after a piece of music by Claude Debussy. It was all
right for him, he was not condemned to living with this straight dark hair. Neither
mousse nor styling gel had the slightest effect on Sophie's hair. Sometimes she
thought she was so ugly that she wondered if she was malformed at birth. Her mother
always went on about her difficult labor. But was that really what determined how
you looked?
Wasn't it odd that she didn't know who she was? And wasn't it unreasonable that she
hadn't been allowed to have any say in what she would look like? Her looks had just
been dumped on her. She could choose her own friends, but she certainly hadn't
chosen herself. She had not even chosen to be a human being.