Human coat hangers

The above photograph is of Allyson Ertel who is in the “development” stable of Elite Model Management, a leading American agency. In the mondo bizarro that is the world of fashion she apparently possesses attributes necessary for a career on the catwalk. To most people in the real non-fashion world she is a dangerously underweight, damning evidence that the fashion industry, for all its postulations and protestations, is no nearer to tackling the controversial issue of size zero. According to a recent Guardian article stick-thin, it seems, is back.

Ertel received star billing on Elite's New York website just two years after the deaths of two Latin American models from eating disorders - one after collapsing on the catwalk. The attendant bad publicity from the deaths of these girls, who were not Elite models, resulted in public pledges from agencies that the health of their young charges would come first. There were admissions of responsibility for the huge influence they wield over teenage girls battling with adolescent body image problems.

Initiatives such as Britain's Model Health Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Kingsmill, made common-sense recommendations which appeared to be eagerly embraced by an industry tarnished not just by the spectre of starvation deaths, but also by allegations of drug abuse. But, ultimately, fashion seems intent on pursuing what powers it: human coat-hangers for creations that barely acknowledge the true female form but, rather, generate excitement, acres of column inches and lucrative sales at the world's leading shows. Bodies are designed to fit clothes, rather than the other way round.

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They are truly shocking. We would never book a model who appeared so obviously underweight,' said Alison Edmond, UK fashion director of the magazine Harper's Bazaar. 'Of course, there are girls who are slim but completely healthy as that is their natural body shape and weight. However, if a girl turns up to a casting in an unhealthy state then we would not even think of booking her, but would recommend to her agency that some intervention was immediately necessary. 'There are aspects of the industry that are fantastic - aspiration, helping us feel good about ourselves. And there are aspects that are truly toxic. And they are not really doing anything about the toxic, I don't think.'

Ali Michael, now 18, was the 'model du jour' in Paris last year, but was turned away in February this year by all but one casting director after gaining 7lb. At 5ft 9in and weighing just 7st 7lb, she was told her legs were 'too plump'. She has now turned whistleblower. In interviews this month she describes how, after three years of modelling, her wake-up call happened on a plane from Paris to Texas, where she comes from. 'I ran my fingers through my hair and when I took my hand away, there was a dry, brittle clump of hair,' she said.

She had started her modelling career at 15 and weighing 9st 2lb. But at each show she attended the message was the same: she needed to lose a few pounds. Finally she starved herself down to 7st 2lb and found that designers loved her. 'It didn't help matters that as I got tinier, my career took off. By the time I entered my second season of shows last September, all I was eating was oatmeal with water for breakfast, a banana and a few grapes for lunch and plain lettuce for dinner, maybe with a bit of fish,' she tells this month's Teen Vogue magazine. 'I stopped getting my period, which should have been a red flag.' She confides how she was sitting with four other girls at a show in Paris last year when she mentioned she had not had a period for over a year, 'and one by one, each of them said, "me too"'. These were girls in their late teens, early twenties. Having been dragged to a doctor and nutritionist by her worried mother, she began eating healthily and her menstrual cycle returned to normal, but her catwalk career appears over. American casting director Douglas Perrett commented on his blog that Michael's fate was because 'the fashion reality is that a new batch of girls are in town, younger and hungrier'.(Yeah, literally hungry, I'll bet!)

Among the recommendations made by the Model Health Inquiry were the banning of under-16s from the catwalk, the introduction of compulsory medical checks, and a trade union. In her report, Baroness Kingsmill said she had found 'startling' evidence of the vulnerability of models who were at 'high risk' of eating disorders. One fashion editor who gave evidence to the inquiry reported she had sat through 'innumerable shows where I have been unable to take in the clothes through shock at the emaciated frames of the models'. France is considering legislation that could see publishers of magazines and websites promoting pictures of ultra-thin models facing jail.

To be honest I simply cannot understand why the fashion industry thinks that a head on a stick is in anyway desirable or makes clothes look better. Any industry that would regard this woman as a heifer is rotten.