After the South American models Luisel Ramos and Carolina Reston starved themselves to death last year to try to reach size ‘zero’, the fashion world promised to be more responsible. It hung its head in shame, and even chivvied some size-12 girls on to the catwalk for London Fashion Week last month. So I imagine that most people think that the whole zero fad has finally faded away, and that teenage girls like me and my school-friends have developed healthier role models and a happier relationship with our food. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint any Spectator-reading parents, but in my experience it’s worse than ever.
My school is deeply ordinary — a fee-paying school but not one of the famous ones, not particularly posh or expensive. It contains 600 girls from 8 to 18 years old, a minority of them boarders, in a nice provincial town. The teaching is good and I think we’re generally the kind of sensible kids who work hard and do fairly well — but there’s no unusual pressure put on us to ‘achieve’. Even so, the obsession with being a size zero is still sweeping through ‘St Thinian’s’ like a virus. And if it’s happening at my school, it’s bound to be the same in other similar establishments.
Let me explain. Last month I gave up chocolate for Lent, but my friend gave up not just chocolate but anything containing sugar. Can you imagine what that means? It’s nearly impossible to cut out sugar altogether, unless you just eat lettuce for over a month. Which is what she did. She wouldn’t even touch fruit, and she wasn’t alone. Many of the other girls decided to copy her example in the desperate hope that it might bring them closer to their goal of being a size zero.
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