”   I started modelling when I was 15 years-old. I was a size eight but I was told to lose a few inches from my hips so I could be eligible for the best jobs. This was normal in the fashion world, so I didn’t think too much of it. At the time I was revising for my GCSEs, so a combination of lunch times spent in the library along with caffeine supplements and no sleep seemed to do the trick. I lost the weight and won a contract to go to Japan.

I had expected it to be glamorous and fun, but it wasn’t like that at all. One day I was put in a line-up with 12 models. We were all naked apart from flesh-coloured thongs, standing in front of a panel of casting directors. They basically went through us and said ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, depending on whether we were thin enough. If you weren’t thin enough you were sent out of the room immediately. I was sent out.

The rest of the time, I was left in a very tiny room and was basically carted off all day in a car and driven around to different castings and dumped off home at the end of the day. I wasn’t looked after, or told what to do. Nobody told me where the supermarket was so I just didn’t really eat. That’s when things spiralled out of control and a year later I was admitted to hospital for anorexia and sent to The Priory.

Six years have passed now, and I am recovering. I have completely left the modelling world, where I worked for designers like Prada, Giles Deacon and Gap. Now I am a personal assistant to the head of a luxury property development company in London. I still struggle with anorexia on a day-to-day basis and probably will for a long time, but the important thing is I don’t have to look thin for my job anymore and I’m happy with myself whatever I size I am.

I want other teenage girls who are battling with body image to get here too, but eating disorders have become normalised. When I developed anorexia, I was still a student at my all-girls school. My friends didn’t know how to react. They would joke about how thin I was – my nickname was pencil because I looked like one. I was never offended by it, but my weight did become a joke because that was how people dealt with it.

When I became noticeably ill-looking, people spoke about it and it meant I secluded myself all the time. I didn’t want to eat anything so I would hide in the library at lunchtime and I ended up becoming addicted to work. I got 9 A*s for my GCSEs and won awards, but it was only because I was starving myself and working extra hours to avoid eating.

I was encouraged to lose weight unhealthily by my modelling agent, but teenage girls need to be proud about what they have as a human being. I want to encourage modelling agents and casting directors to talk to girls about healthy eating, and where they do put pressure on young girls to lose their weight, to do so healthily and sensibly. If young girls are asked to lose weight – and let’s face it, they still are, despite the debate around size zero – casting directors must help girls do so properly. They shouldn’t have to bend to the point of starvation or illness to fit some designer’s fantasy vision.

At the end of the day, my modelling career lasted for three years and as a result, I’ve had anorexia for eight, and I’m still battling it today. It was amazing to work on shows and I loved the clothes and the work itself. But, for the sake of a couple of years of modelling success, it’s just not worth it.”

Georgina Wilkin

Original Article : telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10323519/Former-model-What-young-girls-can-learn-from-my-anorexia.html