No Thinspiration

Their views on food and body image could not be more different: Susannah Jowitt is the author of Fat, So?, which celebrates larger women. Candida Crewe wrote Eating Myself about her battle with anorexia and bulimia.

So what happened when they met?

Susannah Jowitt, 38, is 5ft 7in, weighs 14 stone and is a size 16 to 18.

She lives in West London with her husband Anthony and children Adelaide, five, and Winston, three. Susannah says: When I was 14, I nicked two pieces of bread from the middle of a new loaf of Hovis, then carefully re-sealed the bag with that fiddly piece of sticky yellow tape to escape detection.

Such extraordinary attention to detail was all in vain. My mother had counted the number of slices in the loaf and confronted me with my crime.

It was at that moment that I should have realised all was not well in our family’s Garden of Eating. How many parents count the slices in a loaf?

Such elaborate surveillance was necessary because I was, apparently, a Fat Child and needed to diet. My brother, on the other hand, was a Thin Child, so he was allowed sweets after tea (that’s how I remember it, anyway).

My parents yo-yoed between being people who loved their food (my mother was a truly great cook) and people who paid for their love of food by eating grapefruit. I inherited their greediness but, to my mother’s frustration, I missed out on the guilt gene.

Looking back at photos of myself as an adolescent, I wasn’t even particularly big - sturdy, yes, and with the same frame as my mum, who, by that time, was fat - but certainly nothing to worry about. But worry she did.
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Poured into a gold swimsuit, Make Me A Supermodel winner Jen Hunter looks as if this outfit was custom-made for her.

But the one-piece triggered a furious row about stick-thin models when her rival finalist Marianne Berglund appeared painfully underweight in the same attire.

Appearing here for the first time in the outfit which sparked the debate about size zero models, Miss Hunter - who was criticised on the show for being too fat - said: “This is what a real woman should look like.

“I am all curves and flesh, not skin and bone. Boys, who would you rather snuggle up to?”

Looking as different as chalk and cheese, the swimwear clings to Miss Hunter’s voluptuous curves and reveals acres of cleavage while on clinically underweight Miss Berglund, it shows her protruding hips and ribs and appears to hang off her.

Barmaid Miss Hunter, 24 - who weighs 11 stone and is a healthy size 12 - was reduced to tears when she was castigated on the reality TV show for not taking a food and exercise regime seriously.

Judge Tandy Anderson, managing director of Select Model Management, criticised her for having “stocky” legs while supermodel Rachel Hunter, a fellow panellist, reprimanded her for saying she wanted to prove larger women could be successful models.

Swedish blonde Miss Berglund, 18, who made it to the final with her, was meanwhile praised for having a “sensational” body for modelling despite having a body mass index of 16.1.

It fell well below the minimum BMI of 18 for models taking part in Madrid Fashion Week in September, set after catwalk model Luisel Ramos dropped dead from self-starvation.

But mother-of-one Miss Hunter triumphed when viewers voted her to the top female slot in the contest - and claimed she owed her success to her favourite dish of hotpot and chips.
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Cameron Diaz has become the latest star to say she is worried about the influence of ultra-skinny celebrities.

Her comments echo those of Billie Piper and Kate Winslet, who both criticised the phenomenon last week.

The Hollywood actress, 34, tells ITV1 show Parkinson: “I think it’s terrifying. It’s tragic and sad.

“I think that it’s a sickness, something that’s going on in someone’s head where their perspective is off.

“We get ideals from images that we see and there certainly should be more responsibility put on those people who are putting those images out into the world.

“Let’s be a little bit more responsible to what’s realistic.”

She adds: “I’m a skinny girl, so all my life all I have ever wanted to be is curvaceous and voluptuous, have everything falling out everywhere.

“Some people…their perception and their perspective is completely askew.”

Last week, former Doctor Who star Piper said Victoria Beckham should not be a teenage role model because of her tiny frame.

The star, who suffered from anorexia, said she worried that younger people were looking up to skinny stars.

Former singer Piper, 24, said: “I think the whole size-zero debate is disgusting.

“Some models you see are tiny because that’s the way they were born, but then they’ll get the attention and that will start feeding a fire.
“My sister, who is 13, looks amazing but she’s already worried about her figure.
“She loves Posh and I say: ‘Come on Ellie. She’s tiny. What’s wrong with Shakira? She’s sexy, curvy,’ but she has no interest.”

Winslet also joined the debate, describing the trend as “unbelievably disturbing“.

The 31-year-old said she refused to have any magazines showing skinny stars in her house because of the damaging effect it could have on her six-year-old daughter, Mia.

“It’s only a matter of time before she becomes aware of it and it frightens the life out of me,” she said.

Nicole Richie and Kate Bosworth are among the celebrities whose shrinking figures have been the subject of debate.

The controversy over underweight models has been raging since the death last month of Ana Carolina Reston, 21, a Brazilian model who suffered from anorexia (some pics here).

In August, Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, 22, died of heart failure after not eating for several days.