It was a summer vacation, and I was at a zoo with my family. Because of my extremely pointy nose, when we spotted a group of flamingos (火烈鸟) standing around a pond, my brother shouted at me, “Hey, look! Your real family!” Then, my parents asked me to stand in front of my new-found relatives. “Now turn your face to the side, sweetie,” my mom said. She pressed the button and shot a picture.
Once, I was having lunch at my aunt’s house. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend yet?” she asked. “We were talking about you the other day and saying how pretty you are, Patricia, but we all agreed that if you just took off a little bit of length from that nose, you could be beautiful.”
When I was 14, the performer Ashlee Simpson got a fantastic nose job. I looked at her before-and-after pictures, and I was convinced I needed to get one for myself. I told my mom I was determined to fix my nose. “I thought you had grown out of this by now,” she said, disapproval in her voice. When I begged her to take me to see a plastic surgeon (整容医生), my mother would laugh and tell me there was an easier way to fix my problem. “If you believe you’re beautiful, people will see you that way,” she would say.
She must have had enough of me, because she finally agreed to book me an appointment. Full of expectation, I walked into the doctor’s office. The doctor turned my head up and down while a nurse took a photo of my face. The doctor downloaded the images and played around with my nose’s appearance. Finally, he showed me his finished work in the computer. When I stared at the image, a smile flashed across my face and then disappeared. I made excuses to get out of making another appointment and exited the office, never mentioning a nose job again.
Looking at the old photo, I’m smiling with an inward relief. Had I had that plastic surgery, I would definitely lose my individuality and uniqueness. My mum’s words consistently serve as a reminder that don’t let appearance cast a shadow on our confidence and we should learn to accept and love who we are.
【小题1】What can we possibly infer from paragraph 1?| A．People preferred a pointy nose to a round one. |
| B．People liked taking pictures with flamingos. |
| C．The author’s pointy nose didn’t bother her family. |
| D．The author felt proud of looking like a flamingo. |
| A．The need to find a boyfriend. |
| B．The memory of the summer vacation. |
| C．The dislike for the position of her nose. |
| D．The amazing effect of a celebrity’s case. |
| A．the author kept asking her to arrange it for her |
| B．the author’s aunt managed to change her mind |
| C．the technology of plastic surgeries had advanced a lot |
| D．she thought the author was old enough for a plastic surgery |
| A．mother’s words are a reliable source of enjoyment |
| B．acceptance of our weaknesses is of great importance |
| C．a plastic surgery can make someone more confident |
| D．it’s not worth sacrificing one’s features for beauty |
