Any parent of a young girl reading the report on teenage girls' attitude to cosmetic surgery would be well advised to equip themselves with a small glass of something fortifying beforehand.

There are large swaths of it that will make you want to take your precious daughters to the farthest-flung corner of northern Canada, thereafter to exist only in the company of moose.

The most depressing part involves the statistics about self-esteem. Somewhere around the age of 10, something terrible seems to happen to little girls, and they go from being largely unaware of their bodies to wanting, quite desperately, to be thin.

This weight obsession is not so much health related as an expression of their desire to conform to the norms of what society considers attractive.

Of course, girls obsessing about their weight is nothing new. When I was a teenager, being able to squeeze into a pair of skinny jeans was as vital an aid to popularity as it is today. The difference is that now, as well as eating disorders and faddy diets, we have another horror to contend with: plastic surgery.

In the 11 to 16 age group, a staggering 12 per cent said they would consider weight-loss surgery — a gastric band or the like. Look inside that statistic and you see the problem increase dramatically.

Among 11 to 13-year-old girls, the figure was 10 per cent; among 13 to 16-year-old girls, as the culture really takes hold, it jumps to 14 per cent. In the 16 to 21-year-old category, 50 per cent would consider surgery.

At that age, plastic surgery is not an informed choice, it’s a form of self-harm. The only difference is that instead of cutting yourself with a dirty razor, you’re doing it in a sterile environment under general anaesthetic.

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