ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: Thin models don't trigger anorexia

ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: Proof at last… Thin models don’t trigger anorexia

During my many years editing Vogue, the magazine was constantly being called out as a malign influence on women’s body image. And, in particular, for encouraging eating disorders.

So I was interested to read an excellent new book, Good Girls: A Story And Study Of Anorexia, by Hadley Freeman, who suffered extreme anorexia for decades.

In the examination of her own and fellow sufferers’ experiences, she makes the point that people do not ‘catch’, as it were, eating disorders from fashion magazines.

She explains that anorexia, specifically among eating disorders, is not triggered by somebody looking at images of bony fashion models. However, once gripped by the terrifying, destructive and psychologically demonic state that the illness causes, looking at thin models and celebrities doesn’t help.

In defending fashion imagery, I have always tried to reason that the root of anorexia is not as simple as envying how a model looks – rather that in desperation to emulate them, people are prepared to starve themselves to death. The fact is that women’s feelings about their bodies are extremely complex and embedded in each individual’s aspirations and identity.

For example, attitudes towards food, our bodies’ fuel, is intricately involved in what we feel about ourselves and the world. To see this in play, watch how different women react to food

For example, attitudes towards food, our bodies’ fuel, is intricately involved in what we feel about ourselves and the world. To see this in play, watch how different women react to food.

Over the years I have noticed how women with a more complicated relationship with food spend the most time talking about it. They’ll appear perfectly rational, until you’ve listened to them for a few minutes explaining exactly what they did or did not last eat, whether they feel stuffed, or starving, or how they couldn’t resist buying a choc ice. Over a meal they’ll urge you to have a second or third helping, and not to miss out on the pudding. In restaurants they infallibly order chips, though never eat them.

These are generally the thinnest women around, except they never acknowledge it. In my experience, it is those over 35, rather than young women the age of models, who behave this way.

Others who may be a more usual size 12/14 and probably a bit on the plump side (and, yes, that includes me) tend not to talk about what we eat. Nor are we interested in what others eat. True, we are aware of our weight, but the subject comes relatively low down the pecking order of conversational subjects.

The fascinating issue is why, for some women, the subject of food is so dangerous – sliding from the rather dull preoccupation of many of us into a lethal obsession.

Freeman’s book doesn’t answer this question, and, indeed, asks more. But as an ex-editor who got fed up being blamed for causing the problem, I welcome her insights into the minds of those who have been caught up in such a pervasive and cruel illness.

I want a diet app that says wine’s good!

Still on the subject of food, a friend showed me an app he’s using to control his blood sugar levels.

I was interested to know how he was finding it, thinking it might help me avoid energy slumps in the afternoon.

He explained that it had highlighted what he’d eaten as either being beneficial or damaging to him, and they were exactly what you might expect without having to pay for expensive blood tests and personalised lists.

Bananas, white wheat, sugar, gin – bad. Pulses, green vegetables, coffee and fish – good.

How I long for an app that will tell me that baguettes, pasta, wine and salted caramel should be my mainstays. Now that would be worth paying for.

Akshata’s ahead in the fashion stakes

In the best-dressed stakes, Akshata Murty is like the horse you bet on at the Grand National just because you like the name, who then turns out to be a winner. Over recent weeks, Rishi Sunak’s wife has come up from behind and totally nailed the ‘PM’s wife wardrobe’, which is never a simple achievement.

She often wears lesser-known, middle-range British brands. For the pre-Coronation reception at Buckingham Palace she looked wonderful in navy broderie anglaise by Self-Portrait, while for the ceremony itself she was one of the best dressed, in West Country designer Claire Mischevani’s delicate pale blue satin.

In the best-dressed stakes, Akshata Murty is like the horse you bet on at the Grand National just because you like the name, who then turns out to be a winner

Akshata has also been seen in a vivid striped wool dress from the collaboration between high street favourite Jigsaw and Collagerie, and on Sunday for the Big Lunch in Downing Street she wore high-waisted trousers and a trusty Boden heart print shirt.

Given her wealth, she probably loves luxury fashion brands, but wisely they have been omitted from her public life and left for now in her wardrobe.

Unfortunately, as a nation we’re a bit snippy when it comes to looking too flash. She has got that message – there’s less shearling and leather on show these days.

When it comes to her clothes choices, she’s definitely got control of the reins.

I’ll take grey skies over any lockdown

Bemoaning this year’s dearth of pleasant spring weather, many of us are thinking back to that extraordinary spring of 2020 when the country went dramatically into lockdown and the skies were endlessly clear blue.

It’s amazing how people regard that time with a fond nostalgia. The sun might have shone but it only played up the weird and unreal world that we were suddenly plunged into, locked in our homes with a terrifying virus sweeping the world.

I’d rather have a few grey skies and my freedom.

Matchmaking with all the drama I need

TV TIP: Netflix’s new Jewish Matchmaking series is utterly addictive. Helped by a dating adviser and host Aleeza Ben Shalom, candidates hope to pair off with a dream partner who has perfect eyebrows and blue eyes, combined with a shared level of orthodoxy and strong sense of family. Ideal viewing for anyone wanting a break from endless police dramas.

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