Model Karen admits teen anorexia

Charles Miranda12 April 2012

Karen Elson was a star of the catwalk, modelling for Chanel and Versace and commanding fees of more than £10,000 a day.

Today the 23-year-old revealed that throughout her runway career she had a chronic eating disorder. "I'd be not eating or bulimic and taking laxatives, which is absolutely gross," she says. "Really f***ing myself up."

The working-class girl from Manchester started modelling at 15. Her big break came three years later when she agreed to shave off her eyebrows and dye her hair red. The result was the cover of Italian Vogue and the French fashion industry calling her "Le Freak" and clamouring for her services.

Soon Karen was travelling between London, New York, Milan and Paris as one of the world's highest-paid models. However, all the time, she says, she felt insecure, lonely and carried the unshakeable feeling that she was fat.

"I freaked out and thought I was monstrous and believed people thought I was fat, but in fact I didn't fit into a couple of designers' clothes - that was all," she writes in this month's Vogue.

"I was too young to realise that I'd dug an emotional hole for myself by not paying attention to other parts of my life. But in my mind it got out of proportion and I got into the eating disorder again and lost weight because I was so nervous about fitting in."

The climax of her trauma came with the death of her exboyfriend and the rejection by some photographers and designers for being "too big" - despite being barely larger than a size eight with a figure of 32-24-34. In 1998 she was rejected for work at a Dolce & Gabbana show, reportedly because of her size. At the time she claimed: "I'm not too fussed."

Now, however, she admits she was deeply upset and the incident confirmed her insecurities about her appearance stretching back to her early teens. At 13 she was hospitalised for her eating disorder. She never shook off the problem throughout her success and today confesses to suffering both anorexia and bulimia. She also admits she is still in therapy.

"I started getting depressed because I wasn't making friends - I didn't have time to," she says of modelling. "I'd think, 'I've got to work with these great people tomorrow but it's not going to mean much because I'm going to be on another planet tomorrow night, my mind's fried and I feel very alone'."

She began binge eating and some photographers and designers told her she needed to shed some pounds. It was about this time she began dating her first boyfriend, a New Yorker who was as addicted to drugs as she was to laxatives to lose weight.

He died of a drug overdose shortly after their two-year relationship ended. "His death was the biggest wake-up call I ever had," she writes. "I realised I had to get my s**t together and live for myself, I had formulated a new way of being but it took me a long time.

"My weight has been the same for a while now and I'm known in my job, I can get away with not being so tiny. I'm not saying I'm cured or that I'm going to be a yoga teacher and change the world; I just want to be honest about it. I'm a model; I have to care about the way I look. But if I'm too big for a designer's clothes then I'm not going to starve myself.

"It's an odd journey I've had and I'm only 23. Most people had no idea - I'd been so secretive."

Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman described the first-person article as very brave and candid.

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