Polly Vernon - Grazia Editor

Polly explains over the length of two glossy pages in GRAZIA, why being skinny will always win over being fat. She says: ‘we are obsessing over the skinny because we fear the fat. We fear our own fat. […] We want skinniness – we want to see skinny women, we want to be skinny women – and we then hate ourselves for wanting it, so we hit out at it. Denounce it as evil, sick, mad.’

What bothers me about Polly’s words is that in her attempt to validate her believes, she assumes how we feel about being thin and even suggests that those who speak up against it do so out of jealousy. But what’s even worse, Polly’s words sound like straight off a pro-ana website – the kind of website that offers advise on how to manage an anorexic lifestyle. The bottom line of her article (= being super skinny is great and if you think otherwise you are the one with the problem) is poison to an audience of young and impressionable women who struggle enough with body image, weight and their relationship with food as it is.

Polly acknowledges that ‘super-skinniness and obesity are part of the same horrible screwed-up mess, and we need to deal with them together’. However, she seems to be strangely detached from the fact that she is sitting right in the middle of that mess. She stresses that she isn’t a managed anorexic, but that she sees her excessively controlled behaviour as ‘managing my body’.

Polly:

a) Is a self-proclaimed size 6, who’s too tiny for Victoria Beckham’s denim collection

b) Avoids carbohydrates, stops eating when 80% full, drinks black coffee when ‘overwhelmed by inappropriate hunger’ and likes chilli ‘because it’s an appetite suppressant’

c) Fears gaining weight

According to the World Health Organisation, the diagnostic criteria for Anorexia Nervosa are:

a) Body weight consistently 15% less (or lower) than that expected for height and age, or body mass index of 17.5 or less

b) Weight loss caused by the avoidance of foods perceived to be fattening, along with one or more of the following behaviours: self-induced vomiting, purging, excessive exercise, use of appetite suppressants and/or diuretics

c) Distorted body image perception driven by an intense, irrational fear of becoming fat, leads to the desire to remain at a low body weight

d) Amenorrhea (abnormal absence of a minimum of three successive menstrual cycles) in women, and loss of libido in men. There may be changes in growth hormone, cortisol, thyroid hormone and insulin.

Personally, I don’t care if Polly Vernon is an anorexic or if she becomes huge like a house by April. However, I do care about what is being published in national magazines. Seeing them spread out over two pages gives Polly’s words the air of a certain truth. If you replaced the closet anorexic in the article with a closet alcoholic, I am sure GRAZIA wouldn’t have been so quick to print this odd idea of deluded reality.

Jenny Saville Collages

I have used Jenny Saville as an artist inspiration for my project as she focuses alot on body dismorphia and mutilation - I have used this idea to try to show how many size zero/anorexics see their own body.

I have chosen the colours red, white, pink and yellow to reflect fleshy colours which I think are really effective. Also, Jenny uses similar colour schemes in her paintings.

Tone is also a very important aspect of the paintings as the size of a person can be defined better by the use of this technique.

Child anorexia: is the 'size-zero culture' really to blame?

What makes a child starve themselves until they are so thin that they have to go to hospital? A survey has shown that hundreds of boys and girls under the age of 13 have been admitted to hospital with anorexia nervosa in the past three years in England, doctors and other commentators believe they have the answer: it's "size zero culture".

Young girls have their heads turned by images of celebrities with legs like toothpicks, and they try to copy them because they want to be pretty and popular –  Airbrushing in advertising needs to be stopped, and the epidemic of self-starvation will be checked.

Jenny Saville

In a society often obsessed with physical appearance, Jenny Saville has created a niche for overweight women in contemporary visual culture. Saville's focus has remained on the female body, slightly deviating into subjects with "floating or indeterminant gender," painting large scale paintings of transgender people.

Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients.

In an art form, perhaps this is how people trying to achieve their size zero frame perceive their own bodies?

Child Frame

'Posh' Victoria Beckham works hard at keeping her shape which seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

Despite three children, she's not much bigger than a child herself.

"One can never be too rich, nor too thin"

It was Wallis Simpson - later the Duchess of Windsor - who reportedly came up with the expression: "One can never be too rich, nor too thin".

The Duchess, pictured at her wedding to the Duke in 1937, was one of the original size zero celebrities.

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The 5" model weighed just 6st at the time of her death - she had lived on a diet of apples and tomatoes.

Ana Carolina Reston

The obsession with size zero celebrities is turning women into dieters and binge eaters, according to a medical study.

It says the fashion industry's obsession with thinness not only puts models at high risk of developing eating disorders, but also effects the general public.

Ana Carolina Reston was a Brazilian model who died aged 21 of anorexia nervosa.



Topshop takes down website image of size-zero teen model.

When Codie Young's image was paraded on the Topshop website in July 2011, it triggered a furious response from eating disorder campaigners. The pale young woman with a gaunt face could be seen on the fashion stores homepage wearing tiny clothes that hung off her skeletal frame. "Miss Young is typical of the size-zero models whose waif-like look encourages young girls to become anorexic".

In the original image that could be viewed on the website, promoting the "prim and polished" range, Codie's barely-there waist was accentuated by a belt. The oversized sunglasses also proved controversial, as some claimed they were worn to hide her sunken-eyes, a symptom of undereating - This accusation was denied by Topshop.

There was further criticism from Helel Davies, who carries out research into anorexia:

"Images like this are affecting young girls more than ever before."

"It's a constant battle between eating disorders and Topshop is not helping matters."

"Size four clothes are available in Topshop stores, which implies again that it’s healthy to be that size. Topshop needs to take some responsibility and use healthy models."

However, the complaints sparked off an angry response from Miss Young, who protested on her blog that "supposed professionals... are talking about me as if I'm not  real person."

Topshop also defended Codie Young, who has featured on the cover of Vogue Australia.