Real Bodies Unite

At last we have someone very influential backing what realbodiesunite is trying to achieve, the Duchess of Cornwall. In particular she highlighted the need for women’s magazines to be more responsible about their use of thin models and the way in which they encourage girls to perceive themselves as overweight Young women who go on drastic diets to copy celebrities face a ‘ticking timebomb’ by putting themselves at risk of osteoporosis.

In yesterday’s Mail, Camilla described her anguish at losing her beloved mother, the Honourable Rosalind Shand, to the cruel fragile-bone disease.

The article, her first in a national newspaper, prompted the Mail to launch a campaign to spare other women the same fate. Today, we highlight growing concern within the medical profession about the effect conditions such as anorexia and bulimia are having on female health, as well as strict low-fat diets.

It is an issue that deeply worries the Duchess, 64, who has a daughter, Laura, and two grand-daughters. ‘The link between young girls, eating disorders and osteoporosis is a ticking time-bomb,’ Camilla told a sufferer at a meeting at Clarence House.

The event was organised to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the National Osteoporosis Society and the Daily Mail was the only newspaper invited.

She added: ‘A whole generation of young women could be affected. What particularly concerns me is the rise of osteoporosis in young people and its link with eating disorders.

You have all these glossy magazines which are read by young girls, who then go on a diet and try to be thin to emulate the models they see.‘

‘They, the magazines, bear a lot of responsibility in what they write because the girls read them and go on these crash diets, sometimes developing eating disorders. The trouble is that at that age you think you are immortal. You don’t think anything will happen to you. But what they don’t realise is that while they may recover and start eating again, the damage may well already be done.

‘They feel like, “Nothing hurts, I’m not in pain – so what’s the problem?” They don’t realise that in 20 years’ time they could end up in a wheelchair because of what they have done to themselves.’

Camilla added: ‘You can eat sensibly, exercise and stay trim. You don’t have to starve yourself  and risk damaging your health irrevocably. We need to make young girls aware of this. We need to drive it home’

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