enelope Tree, one of the original ‘waif’ models, was anorexic when she was at the height of her fame. She says she started dieting at boarding school because she felt emotionally abandoned. She was 36 before she got bulimia under control. She identifies “the sad and pitiful irony of beautiful models in beautiful expensive magazines who are destroying themselves for other people”.

She remains convinced that having an eating disorder is rewarded by society. It is seen as glamorous, enviable, professionally successful and financially rewarding for models and actors. She believes that women are trapped into being thinner for other women as part of the competition and that the industry that encourages the unreal thinness is bigger than all of us. “But steps can be taken on an individual basis,” she says. “Young women, especially adolescents, have to be taught how to feel good about themselves. You have to find something worthwhile to fill the hole of emptiness and confusion that confronts us all when we are growing up.”