Hello Friends!
When I meet Rachael Johnston, it’s like looking in a mirror.
The same ability as me to lie, the same steely single-mindedness, the same self-doubt.
There’s the lofty disdain of health professionals and parents, the conviction that we are right and the rest of the world is wrong; a feeling that everyone else is slovenly and greedy.
Rachael and I share the wish to be perfect, as well as an addiction to Diet Coke.
We both have anorexia nervosa, the psychiatric illness which causes more fatalities than any other, and which is the most difficult disease from which to recover fully.
We also share an addiction to the only thing we have ever wanted to feed on, suckle at and drink in great big, thirsty gulps: the glossy world of fashion magazines, the sartorial equivalent of toxic waste.
Rachael, who is 20, hit the headlines last week when she and her mother, Lynne, set up an online petition calling for airbrushed photographs in glossy magazines to be clearly labelled as such.
Rachael’s decline into anorexia was made worse by her obsession with photographs of super-slim celebrities in magazines.
The same ability as me to lie, the same steely single-mindedness, the same self-doubt.
There’s the lofty disdain of health professionals and parents, the conviction that we are right and the rest of the world is wrong; a feeling that everyone else is slovenly and greedy.
Rachael and I share the wish to be perfect, as well as an addiction to Diet Coke.
We both have anorexia nervosa, the psychiatric illness which causes more fatalities than any other, and which is the most difficult disease from which to recover fully.
We also share an addiction to the only thing we have ever wanted to feed on, suckle at and drink in great big, thirsty gulps: the glossy world of fashion magazines, the sartorial equivalent of toxic waste.
Rachael, who is 20, hit the headlines last week when she and her mother, Lynne, set up an online petition calling for airbrushed photographs in glossy magazines to be clearly labelled as such.
Rachael’s decline into anorexia was made worse by her obsession with photographs of super-slim celebrities in magazines.
She traces the beginnings of her illness back to being 13, when she saw a picture of Victoria Beckham in a magazine.
‘I absolutely loved her. She seemed to have it all. She was skinny, with big boobs,’ Rachael says.
‘She was my idol. I went around telling everyone that when I grew up, I wanted to have big breasts and be really, really thin.’
What would she say to her idol now, if she were to walk through the door?
Sisters in arms: Liz Jones meets with Rachael Johnston who is calling to ban airbrushed models in glossy magazines
‘She has a daughter now. Is she going to pass her neuroses on to her? I want children, but I wouldn’t want my daughter to go through what I’ve been through.’
Rachael, who is 5ft 4in, was size 10/12 and weighed 8st in January 2005, when she made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
Before long she was in the grip of twin addictions — to starvation and to glossy magazines. She started obsessing over thin celebrities, compiling motivational scrapbooks with pictures of them which she would pore over to stop herself eating when she felt hungry.
‘I spent all my money on magazines. I’d buy them on the way to school, then hide them in my bedroom.
'Other girls were buying shoes and make-up, but I’d spend my money on all the weeklies and two or three monthlies — any magazine with someone on the front who I thought looked skinny.
Rachael, who is 5ft 4in, was size 10/12 and weighed 8st in January 2005, when she made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
Before long she was in the grip of twin addictions — to starvation and to glossy magazines. She started obsessing over thin celebrities, compiling motivational scrapbooks with pictures of them which she would pore over to stop herself eating when she felt hungry.
‘I spent all my money on magazines. I’d buy them on the way to school, then hide them in my bedroom.
'Other girls were buying shoes and make-up, but I’d spend my money on all the weeklies and two or three monthlies — any magazine with someone on the front who I thought looked skinny.
Happier times: Liz Jones and Rachael Johnston share a laugh as they met to talk over shared issues
I couldn’t live without them. It was like porn, but the difference is they didn’t make me feel good. I looked at the photographs of celebrities and would tell myself: “You don’t look like that.”
‘As I flicked through the pages, my mood would drop, then I would self-harm. I’d cut my arms with a knife — something that went on throughout my teenage years.’
‘As I flicked through the pages, my mood would drop, then I would self-harm. I’d cut my arms with a knife — something that went on throughout my teenage years.’
For me, it was the pages of Vogue which allowed me to escape my drab, unattractive Essex childhood, and inhabit a loftier, thinner, more beautiful universe.
I felt as though a switch had been turned on in my brain, and from that moment on, I never again thought of my body in the same way. Food and exercise became the focus of my existence.
The switch was flipped when I saw a photograph of the model Debbie Dickinson, eating a slice of watermelon in the pages of Health and Beauty in Vogue.Ah! So that’s how you have a beautiful life!
You eschew your mum’s stews and cakes, Walnut Whips and Yorkshire puddings, and you eat only exotic fruit.
Gaunt: Rachael, 15, with a nasal feeding tube. She weighed less than 6st
Well, I could do that. And I jolly well did do that, existing on fruit, water and little else (one hazelnut Loseley yoghurt constituted binge-eating for me) for the next ten, 20, 30, 40 years.
I wondered if Rachael was an introverted child, and whether she was interested in boys by the age when her illness started.
‘I was chatty as a little girl, but in my teens I became very quiet. All the other girls had boyfriends, drank alcohol and smoked, but I never did that.’
I tell Rachael I never drank or smoked or had much interest in boys: for me, it was all about fear that I would be found out as disgusting. Anorexia is a highly efficient way to stave off puberty, and male attention.
‘I only ever had periods from April to October 2005,’ says Rachael. ‘I was chuffed to bits when they stopped because, if my periods restarted, that meant I must be getting fat.’
I had one period when I was 18, and they didn’t return until a few brief months in my 30s. I found the idea of menstruation disgusting: it didn’t fit in with my perfect glossy world, which in the Seventies and Eighties was all big white smiles, shoulder-pads, and Donna Karan bodies.
For both Rachael and me, the roots of our illness are fixed in our childhoods. I had older sisters who were always following diets published in the magazines Honey and 19.
One day, as I was eating marmalade on toast, a sister told me if I continued to gorge like that, I would get fat.
That planted a seed, which was duly watered with insecurity.
For Rachael, the seed was planted in primary school, when each class member was asked to write down their weight, height and age.
‘We all had to comment on each other’s bodies, and it turned out I was one of the heaviest. I wrote next to my name and statistic: “I’m fat.” I remember the teacher ticked it, and gave me a smiley face.’
Rachael started policing what she ate in 2005, when she was 13. She would hide food up the sleeve of a sweater, then dump it later when nobody was looking. She would do 1,000 sit-ups in her bedroom a day, and walk for miles. She would also starve herself.
Didn’t her parents notice? A stupid question: Rachael, like me, would swaddle herself in layers of loose clothes, and lie and lie and lie.
‘My mum would comment about my weight, but I was so good at lying, I could fool everyone,’ she admits.
Her mother, Lynne, works with people with mental health issues. Her father is a government officer who works with mental health statistics.
Emaciated: Rachael's spine and ribs can be clearly seen in these worrying shots of her at her skinniest
Regardless, any anorexic will tell you that parents do not have a hope in hell of stopping your compulsion to starve yourself — even if they do eventually notice that you no longer join them at the table for Sunday lunch.
Parents can rarely be blamed. They are powerless against the might, the brainwashing, of the fashion media, the people who want us to be so unhappy with our bodies — given we don’t have model Karlie Kloss’s 22-inch waist — that we buy more stuff and try to change ourselves.
Rachael was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when she was 14, and for the next three years her weight never went above 6st.
She was constantly in and out of hospital, and on one occasion went without food or water for ten days.
Rachael was in the middle of her GCSEs (which she passed, as well as four A-levels: anorexics are nothing if not good students) and decided simply to stop eating or drinking.
‘Mum’s clever. She came to pick me up after one exam, and wouldn’t tell me where we were going. When I twigged that we were driving towards the hospital, I started screaming: “You evil bitch!”, but she had locked the car doors to stop me getting out.’
Rachael was admitted to hospital again and fed by a nasal tube for several months. Later she was admitted to a specialist eating disorders unit at The Priory in Manchester, where she spent the next two years trying to get well — seeing psychiatrists and having therapy.
‘It was very competitive in The Priory, in terms of who was eating the fewest calories,’ she says.
Rachael’s stay didn’t cure her of her anorexia.
The reason anorexics have the lowest recovery rate of all psychiatric illnesses is that we think we are smarter than those who treat us.
'I wanted to be skinny with big boobs like Posh'I used to sew water bottles into the lining of my Paul Smith overcoat every time the nurses put me on the scales in hospital. Rachael used to feed her food to other patients, or hide it under her mattress.
Her lowest point came in 2009, when she was released from The Priory. Her weight had fallen to 4½st.
Why, after all the treatment and therapy she’d been through, did Rachael allow her weight to become so dangerously low?
‘I thought, I’m going to see how far I can push this. I’d had years of therapy but I thought, I don’t want help, I don’t want to get better.’
Only an anorexic can understand the serenity and triumph that come from starvation. You are different from everyone else in the world. You don’t need sustenance.
Not eating frees you up, because you never have to do pedestrian things such as shop in a supermarket, or wash up.
You think you are above such things. You think you can, literally, survive on thin air.
But then Rachael hit rock-bottom. She took an overdose of prescription drugs when she was 17, and ended up in hospital in a coma.
‘I don’t remember the week before I took the tablets, or the week after,’ she says. ‘My parents were told it was unlikely I’d pull through.’ She did pull through, however, and the turning-point in her illness came a year later.
As her friends prepared to move away and start university, Rachael reflected on how her future lay in yet more hospital stays, and realised that something had to change.
‘I thought: “I just can’t do this any more.”’
No anorexia sufferer is ever totally cured, however, and, three years later, Rachael still has bad days.
She lives with her parents and works for the Centre for Independent Living, where disabled people can spend time, and get advice and support. It’s here she met her boyfriend, Tom, a co-worker.
Parents can rarely be blamed. They are powerless against the might, the brainwashing, of the fashion media, the people who want us to be so unhappy with our bodies — given we don’t have model Karlie Kloss’s 22-inch waist — that we buy more stuff and try to change ourselves.
Rachael was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when she was 14, and for the next three years her weight never went above 6st.
She was constantly in and out of hospital, and on one occasion went without food or water for ten days.
Rachael was in the middle of her GCSEs (which she passed, as well as four A-levels: anorexics are nothing if not good students) and decided simply to stop eating or drinking.
‘Mum’s clever. She came to pick me up after one exam, and wouldn’t tell me where we were going. When I twigged that we were driving towards the hospital, I started screaming: “You evil bitch!”, but she had locked the car doors to stop me getting out.’
Rachael was admitted to hospital again and fed by a nasal tube for several months. Later she was admitted to a specialist eating disorders unit at The Priory in Manchester, where she spent the next two years trying to get well — seeing psychiatrists and having therapy.
‘It was very competitive in The Priory, in terms of who was eating the fewest calories,’ she says.
Rachael’s stay didn’t cure her of her anorexia.
The reason anorexics have the lowest recovery rate of all psychiatric illnesses is that we think we are smarter than those who treat us.
'I wanted to be skinny with big boobs like Posh'I used to sew water bottles into the lining of my Paul Smith overcoat every time the nurses put me on the scales in hospital. Rachael used to feed her food to other patients, or hide it under her mattress.
Her lowest point came in 2009, when she was released from The Priory. Her weight had fallen to 4½st.
Why, after all the treatment and therapy she’d been through, did Rachael allow her weight to become so dangerously low?
‘I thought, I’m going to see how far I can push this. I’d had years of therapy but I thought, I don’t want help, I don’t want to get better.’
Only an anorexic can understand the serenity and triumph that come from starvation. You are different from everyone else in the world. You don’t need sustenance.
Not eating frees you up, because you never have to do pedestrian things such as shop in a supermarket, or wash up.
You think you are above such things. You think you can, literally, survive on thin air.
But then Rachael hit rock-bottom. She took an overdose of prescription drugs when she was 17, and ended up in hospital in a coma.
‘I don’t remember the week before I took the tablets, or the week after,’ she says. ‘My parents were told it was unlikely I’d pull through.’ She did pull through, however, and the turning-point in her illness came a year later.
As her friends prepared to move away and start university, Rachael reflected on how her future lay in yet more hospital stays, and realised that something had to change.
‘I thought: “I just can’t do this any more.”’
No anorexia sufferer is ever totally cured, however, and, three years later, Rachael still has bad days.
She lives with her parents and works for the Centre for Independent Living, where disabled people can spend time, and get advice and support. It’s here she met her boyfriend, Tom, a co-worker.
Rachael now: The 20-year-old is now campaigning with her mother to change the way glossy magazines use airbrushed pictures of models
Having volunteered at the centre for a while, she was given a paid job as a body image ambassador, visiting schools and colleges and giving talks about her illness.
But funding for the centre has just been cut, and the day before we meet, Rachael was told she no longer had a job.
‘So yesterday was a bad day,’ she admits. ‘I nearly bought a magazine, and I hardly ate. I still have to be careful about eating properly.
‘I don’t weigh myself any more, but I feel I’m a healthy size 8 now. I want to have children one day, but I will have to be carefully monitored in case I get ‘pregorexia’ — women who try to lose weight while they’re pregnant.’
Anorexia has left Rachael with osteoporosis in her back and knees, and she takes medication for depression.
She is demanding a ban on airbrushed images in magazines and advertisements aimed at children.
Her e-petition urges the Government to institute a ban, or, failing that, she wants health warnings placed on airbrushed photographs.
‘These glossy magazines aren’t aimed at under-16s, but they still read them,’ Rachael says. ‘If an image has been airbrushed, it should say so — and which parts of the body have been altered.’
Anorexia is a problem I’ve been battling, along with my other demons, since 2000, when the Government held a Body Summit at Westminster. I made a speech there, calling for the fashion industry to be more responsible, so that no more young girls were subjected to the unattainable.
Rachael was nine then. We didn’t manage to save her. Today, I read her some recent responses from highly-paid magazine editors about their use of airbrushing, and of skinny models and celebrities.
First, Deborah Joseph, editor of Easy Living, when asked why her cover photographs are so heavily airbrushed: ‘It’s quality control.’
Jo Elvin, the editor of Glamour, said: ‘I’m thin, so what?’
Alexandra Shulman, editor of UK Vogue: ‘Don’t ask me about skinny models.’
As she listens to what they have to say, Rachael blinks back big tears.
‘How can a small group of people cause such pain?’ she asks.
‘I might wake up, look at a magazine, see a skinny celebrity and think: “Lose weight, Rachael. Don’t eat today.”
‘Anorexia has ruined my life. They have ruined my life.’
To sign Rachael’s petition, visit epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31414
Written By Liz Jones for The Daily Mail UK.
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Simply Cheska...
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