By Sarah Sinclair

Last updated 11:25, Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Victoria Beckham is glamorous, mega-rich and successful with a figure to die for – literally. She looks like she’s starving herself to death like lots of other models and celebrities.

Magazines tells us it’s cool to look like that but it’s no secret that behind the glamour and glossy pictures, some of these so-called role models and dangerously ill.

I don’t know how healthy Victoria Beckham is at the moment, but it’s well documented that her weight recently plummeted to just six stone.

Lots of professional people claim she has an eating disorder, yet some girls still find her appearance attractive.

Many illnesses associated with ridiculously skinny women stem from deep mental problems, and magazine editors should be more responsible when they portray these women as role models.

One in five women suffer from an eating disorder, 90 per cent are aged between 12 and 25. Some 61 per cent of women feel inadequate compared to the media perception of women, while 89 per cent want more average-sized models to be used in magazines.

Losing weight can make you feel great for a while, but when 12-year-olds are refusing to eat, we have to take a long, hard look at this problem. After years of idolising size zero, the fashion industry is finally beginning to realise the dangers.

Daisy Lowe, the latest to take the modelling world by storm, is gorgeous and naturally a size 10-12. Although she still has a very slim figure what is more important is her attitude. “Fashion is about how you express yourself through clothes, so I just don’t see why models have to be so tiny,” she says.

Few of us are naturally stick thin, and only the lucky ones have curves in all the right places. Unless we start promoting healthy eating, more and more young girls will pay the ultimate price for our obsession with skinny looks.

Sarah Sinclair, 17, is a sixth form student at Keswick School