Remember that when she started, with those famous shots by Corinne Day in The Face, Kate Moss was 15 years old. (She says of that shoot: "Corinne just wanted to bring out everything that I hated when I was 15. My bow legs, the mole on my breast, the way I laughed.") But by 1994, she was earning $2.6 million a year with contracts for Gucci, Louis Vuitton and, of course, Calvin Klein. Her rail-thin body sold jeans and fragrance, and became an "Obsession," to say the least. Previous supermodels, like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, were in possession of a more "robust" physique. But Kate Moss ushered in a new style. It started out as shocking, but everyone adjusted, and looking back, she doesn't even seem so skinny anymore! So. Thin was in, and it stayed stylish. Ms. Freeman writes: "In the next issue of Interview magazine, Moss admits that at times she was too thin: 'When I was doing shows ... nobody ever fed me. I didn't eat for a long time. Not on purpose ... I remember standing up in the bath one day, and there was a mirror in front of me, and I was so thin! I hated it. I never liked being that skinny.' Hilariously, the journalist, confirming all cliches about the fashion press, interrupts: 'I didn't think you were all that skinny.' But Moss stands admirably firm: 'I remember thinking, I don't want to be this skinny.'"

When a tipster sent us the link to the Guardian story (which was already on our radar) with the comment: "Kate Moss is the new Che Guevara. Ahem." I sort of rolled my eyes. But actually, the tipster, Hadley Freeman and Kate Moss are right: The fashion industry needs a revolution. And the chances of things being changed by someone from the outside are — forgive me — slim. Only someone who has been granted access into the inner sanctum, who is well-respected, who has worked in the trenches, who knows all the players and knows the game can actually make an impact. Will a post-coke scandal, open-about-starving-herself Kate Moss be the one? Can Kate Moss be a revolutionary in whole new way?

Only The Clotheshorses Can Buck Fashion's Thin Fixation, Fashion Industry Made Me Too Thin, Says Kate Moss [Guardian]

Rowan became fixated on food in her teens: Counting calories, weighing herself. She seems to have snapped out of it at age 17, but now she has daughters, 14 and 11. The 11 year old thinks that she is fat. Ms. Rowan writes:

"Oh Mummy, look at my fat tummy," she has wailed, tugging at a T-shirt in an effort to pull it over her waistband. Shopping for a swimming costume is angst-ridden. "Not a bikini," she stresses, "one that covers this up," pointing to her stomach. Her sensitivity is born of comments from her peers. "A friend told me," she confides, "to stop pushing my tummy out. I wasn't." … I ask our doctor if she is too heavy. And I feel ghastly, disloyal, like a vain, competitive designer mummy who wants her daughter to appear as perfect maternal accessory. He regards me as if that's precisely what I am. No, he says sharply, calculating her body mass index; she's fine. I cannot explain that I am asking so that I can reassure my little girl the next time she worries about the way she looks.

What happens when something goes mainstream is that people feel comfortable talking about it. It's a good thing that eating disordered people not feel shame or misunderstanding; but how come 11-year-olds feel it's okay to make comments about each others' bodies? And what message is sent when you take your (normal, healthy) daughter to the doctor to have her weight checked? And should we even be using words like "wannarexic" and "nearlyrexic"?

The Rise Of The 'Rexics': Another Illness We Made Up Earlier [Guardian]
Mummy, Do I Look Fat? [Times of London]