Cadaverous 16-year-olds - the chosen models of the fashion industry

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60. I have some ideas.

I should know, because I am a woman who for several years spent about half her waking hours obsessively scheming how to either lose weight or keep her weight down.

I was a chubby kid who liked to eat a lot, but I felt so badly shamed, a bit from from other girls, but even worse from "concerned" adult women who had such big, serious eyes and a grave, whispering, finger-wagging tone when they talked about my "size". God how mortifying! Nowadays, my weight would have been considered dead-average for a 10 year old.

But then I learned how to eat healthfully, and learned which foods I could pig out on and which foods to avoid. But I always felt, "the skinnier, the better". In my 20s I felt that my self-worth was directly connected to my weight. As long as I was thin, everything was okay. Being thin was all that mattered to me, at some points in my life. And I've been successful at staying slim!

I learned some tricks, like drink black coffee if you feel hungry. Drink tons of water so you won't have room in your stomach for food. I ate metabolife pills every day (ephedra) for a while. There was even a phase when I skipped real food as much as possible and ate Spirutein (high-protein nutritional paste) instead. I exercised so much I had irregular periods.

My cynical view: Humans have evolved with food scarcity, and now that we have a relative abundance of food, we don't have an "off switch" to stop eating. A lot of men are fatter than they should be, but they don't have the same pressure to be near-skeletal, as for women. In a way, women (lots of men, too) are lucky that we store fat so efficiently, because it means we are tough survivors.

I happen to like the looks of my facial bones, which can only be seen when I'm thin. Also, clothing is a lot more enjoyable when slim.