Hajnal Ban was five-foot-one before checking herself into a Russian clinic eight years ago. After four excruciating operations that involved breaking and resetting bones in her legs, she emerged with an extra three inches in height. Ban wrote a book about the experience at the time under a pseudonym, but recently disclosed her identity as the author. She says she was teased in school about her height, and doubted her prospects as a young lawyer unless she gained some physical stature. She ran unsuccessfully for national office in Australia’s 2007 federal election, but has been a councillor in Logan City Queensland for three years. “As much as it worked for me,” she says, “it is not something I would necessarily promote or endorse.”
Will the time ever come when women will be free from falling for the hype that an "acceptable" physical appearance is so important that they will suffer almost any indignity to achieve it?
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