By Rosalind Ponomarenko-jones
Eva Herzigova: 'I've lost weight without really noticing'
There they all are in the celebrity magazine Heat this week: a parade of stick-thin stars so emaciated they look as if the slightest pressure would snap them in two.
'The Rise Of The Celebrity Twiglets!' screams the headline, beneath a procession of skeletal young women. The analogy is entirely appropriate.
These women have no more substance than a cocktail snack. Indeed, their limbs are so denuded of flesh that they resemble the knobbly appendages of famine victims.
Who are they? Actually - and significantly - they are not identified by their achievements, merely by their appearance.
A gaunt, bony Eva Herzigova (no allusion to her modelling or films) declares unconvincingly: 'I've lost weight without really noticing - I haven't dieted and I'm healthy.'
Alongside her, the singer Nadine Coyle, whose legs are as fleshless as the prongs of a fork, attests: 'If anything, I've put weight on since the last Girls Aloud tour.'
A worryingly starved-looking Alexa Chung - the TV presenter hailed as a style icon - admits her weight is dwindling, but alleges it's because she 'hasn't got time' to go to the supermarket.
What is happening here? I believe the messages being sent out by such photographs are as complex as they are pernicious. Ostensibly, we are urged to be shocked by these images of women who seem to have whittled themselves away.
However, while the celebrity magazine headline says 'This is appalling', I believe an unwritten sub-text shrieks: 'Isn't it amazing that these women are so thin?'
So skewed have our society's values become that there is now a terrible glamour about being preternaturally skinny.
The rise of the twiglet celebrity: Girls Aloud singer Nadine Coyle and actress Renee Zellweger
Should pictures like these of Alexa Chung and Nicole Richie carry a health warning?
Two sisters who died of anorexia: Eliana (left) and Luisel Ramos on the catwalk shortly before her death
Eva Longoria (left) is so thin, she makes scandalously skinny Victoria Beckham look normal-sized
source :dailymail
Eva Herzigova: 'I've lost weight without really noticing'
The rise of the twiglet celebrity: Girls Aloud singer Nadine Coyle and actress Renee Zellweger
Should pictures like these of Alexa Chung and Nicole Richie carry a health warning?
Two sisters who died of anorexia: Eliana (left) and Luisel Ramos on the catwalk shortly before her death
Eva Longoria (left) is so thin, she makes scandalously skinny Victoria Beckham look normal-sized
