Decades of starving myself and dodgy diet pills may be the reason I can’t have children

Does it only seem like this to me, or does everyone seem to be thin again?

Overnight, Instagram seems to be filled with images of incredibly emaciated bodies.

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In recent months, celebrities like Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera and Katy Perry have shown off significantly slimmer figures.

They join Sharon Osbourne who lost 50lb (22kg) in 2022 and 2023 after taking the slimming drug Ozempic (“too much”, she admitted) and EastEnders actress Letitia Dean who recently dropped four dress sizes after giving up junk food.

What’s going on? Did the body positivity movement really happen? Or did we never give up our obsession with thinness and just stop talking about it?

I spent decades trying to get thinner than my body would ever allow.

For as long as I can remember, my life has been an endless cycle of exercising, starving, overeating, and ultimately depression when the scale wouldn’t budge.

I’ve been on a certain diet for almost two-thirds of my life (low carb, sugar free, only Ryvita and those plastic slices of cheese that look like Barbie pudding) and have fluctuated between a size 38 and a size 44/46.

Over the course of my 45 years, I have used laxatives to lose weight and even ordered “diet pills” on eBay that came in a doll’s head and gave me heart palpitations for days.

I have a broken knee from years of excessive exercise and have often wondered if my inability to conceive was due to the delayed menstruation between the ages of 13 and 17, which was most likely due to starving myself.

I wish it weren’t so. But like many women my age, I spent most of my life wanting to be one thing: thin.

When I was younger, I wanted to be thin more than smart.

I wanted to be thin more than I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be thin more than I wanted to be loved, happy, or healthy.

This is an old-fashioned thing to admit, but it’s true. I haven’t spoken about it in years, intimidated by the fickle mobs — on social media and among my peers — who feel that such an admission is a betrayal of all the work women have done to steer the conversation away from size zero.

By the way, as the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and the first editor-in-chief to put a real plus-size model, Tess Holliday, on the cover, I’ve played my own part in trying to change perceptions.

The truth is that women’s bodies have always been subject to fashion and cultural changes.

Heroin chic

In the 1920s, relative emancipation made boyish bodies with flat chests all the rage.

A generation later, in the Golden Age of Hollywood, big-breasted stars sparked a fashion trend for breasts and hips.

In the 1980s, fueled by the decade’s obsession with fitness, the “strong” athletic bodies of supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Elle Macpherson were the gold standard.

But bodies in the recession-hit 1990s drew inspiration from the most alarming source of all: drug addiction.

Xylophone torsos, sharp, angry hip bones and legs like ballpoint pens gave the term “thin” a new meaning.

I was born in the late 70s and growing up our body idols were Jane Fonda, Princess Diana and Demi Moore. It later transpired that all of them, at the height of their fame, had eating and/or exercise disorders.

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I was 13 when the supermodels arrived and 15 when heroin chic emerged.

When I was in my early twenties, size zero was all the rage.

My generation was raised to believe that calling someone thin was a compliment. That doesn’t mean we believed this behavior was okay. It’s just all we knew.

And then, one day, out of the blue, everything we knew was wrong — dangerous and wrong. Talking about dieting and wanting to lose a dress size before your vacation was met with silence or raised eyebrows.

Asking someone if they have lost weight is no longer considered a compliment.

A few things happened during that time that made me realize how quickly the world had moved on without me.

The first was when I posted a picture of my lunch on Instagram. I was on Weight Watchers at the time and for reasons unknown to me, I was only allowed to eat chicken and blueberries.

I thought it was innocent enough – funny even – until a few hours later someone pointed out to me that a budding body-positivity activist had shared my photo on her social media.

The irony that I was supporting a movement that I could not be a part of was not lost on me

Farrah Storr

Never before has a photo of a Tupperware box caused so much outrage and amazement.

Then, as a magazine editor, I commissioned a journalist to write about her dramatic weight loss after a terrible divorce. The piece was excellent and full of compassion.

But at a meeting, nearly everyone raised their hands and said the story was too dangerous to publish.

After that, I kept my mouth shut about bodies. The only women I could talk to about my weight were the ones older than me—and even then, we talked about it in hushed tones, as if we were planning an anthrax attack.

The body positivity movement, for the most part, is a great balm for women’s bodies. I contributed a lot to it when I was editor of both Cosmo and ELLE.

The irony that I was supporting a movement that I myself could not be a part of was not lost on me.

Hidden truth

“Love your body, whatever form it takes” was the unofficial mantra.

But what if you don’t feel capable of doing so?

My public beliefs no longer matched my private beliefs.

I proudly told people I was a size 12, but at fashion weeks I would cry in my hotel room when I realized once again that I was one of the biggest editors on the front row.

When I worked at ELLE, we often got clothes as gifts. It was a nice perk of the job, but it was also a shame because I almost always had to politely return the size small they sent me.

I have left the fashion world now. I no longer work in an office with dozens of young, beautiful colleagues.

I spend more money on garden tools than on clothes.

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But the truth is, I will never stop wanting to be thin. Although age and time have allowed me to accept the body I have — currently a curvy size 14 — I will always yearn to be smaller.

It’s exhausting and tragic and, in a world full of terrible suffering, more than a little self-obsessed. It makes me shudder.

Am I dangerous if I confess all this? I hope not.

All in all, I think it is much more dangerous to pretend to accept your body, while the hidden truth is much darker.

I know countless women who are still dieting but are masking their behavior as a food intolerance.

Sports are still popular, but are taking place behind closed doors, with back-to-back online classes instead of three-hour public sports sessions.

True body acceptance is accepting that not all women can suddenly – or perhaps ever – accept their own bodies

Farrah Storr

Fasting and detoxing are a socially accepted way to give restricted eating a new image.

The sheer number of women who appear to have shrunk overnight – celebrities and others – suggests that their behavior has not changed as dramatically as we would like to believe.

Instead, they simply went underground.

For every twenty-something who isn’t shy and walks around in cycling shorts with beautiful, thick thighs, there’s a forty-something who’s still counting calories and dreaming of the day she can fit into size 28 jeans again.

True body acceptance means accepting that not all women can accept their own bodies just like that, or maybe never.

Pretending we don’t exist—or worse, labeling ourselves as outdated because of the beliefs that have been imposed on us—doesn’t help.

Our beliefs may be outdated, but the price we pay for them is much, much worse.