It’s a cold Sunday night in Glasgow, I’m miles from home, lying in a hotel bed with a temperature, feeling nauseous and weak. I’m retching, but nothing comes out. By 6am, I’m emailing my boss and editor to call in sick, something I’ve done only twice in my entire career. I feel awful, and the worst thing? I’ve done this to myself.
Rewind to Friday. I’d injected myself with a weight-loss drug, which I got from an acquaintance who had extra doses. I’d been wanting to take it for a while and had already made attempts to get it legitimately, which included downloading an app, stuffing clothes under a chunky jumper, wearing a particularly unflattering pair of tracksuit bottoms and even stuffing my bra with more bras to appear heavier in pictures to prove that I needed it. To my utter delight, I passed the initial screening, but when it came to a live video consultation with a doctor, I knew my cheek bones would be a dead giveaway. I was refused it, on the grounds that I was not overweight. But that didn’t deter me, so I made some calls to people I knew were on it.
I knew I wasn’t overweight, but I’d been desperate to lose a few kilogrammes. I was exercising, eating healthily, doing everything you’re supposed to do, only to undo my progress with weekend benders. It was a vicious cycle I couldn’t break, and I was desperate for a shortcut. I injected myself with a dose far too high for me that Friday and initially felt absolutely fine, but by Sunday night, all hell had broken loose. I was sweating, shivering, relentlessly nauseous and so weak I could barely lift my head.
On Monday, I managed two crackers without being sick and didn’t leave my bed. By Tuesday, I’d dragged myself into work, barely functioning. And yes, within days of that fateful Friday injection, something genuinely upsetting had happened: I’d fallen out of love with food. The very thought of eating made me want to projectile vomit.
This was the turning point. Food is my love language. I love eating it and cooking it for family and friends. Frankly, it’s one of life’s greatest pleasures. Better than sex. So when I walked into a gorgeous Italian deli near where I was staying in Glasgow, I knew something was wrong. Normally, I’d salivate over the ’nduja, arancini and fresh pasta. Instead, the smells made me gag. Nothing looked appetising, and I walked out thinking: “You’ve sacrificed one of life’s greatest joys to lose a few kg. You f**king mug.”
The truth is, I hadn’t done my homework thoroughly. I knew there were side effects: feeling full quicker, nausea if you overindulged, and that everyone reacted differently. I hadn’t exactly read the T&Cs. Who does? I was willing to take the gamble. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how completely it could rob me of my appetite, making food utterly repulsive.
So you might ask why would a reasonably intelligent, 41-year-old raging feminist who’s spent her career questioning the expectations placed on women willingly put herself through such misery?
I grew up in the era of heroin chic, size zero and Kate Moss. An entire fashion industry, with Vogue at the centre of its universe, taught my generation to believe a fallacy: that the most desirable thing a woman could be was as small as possible. Thinness wasn’t just about beauty. It represented success, desirability and status. Skinny was power.
And that conditioning doesn’t simply disappear because we know better. More than two decades later, I don’t think I have a single female friend who doesn’t, on some level, still want to be thinner. These are brilliant, successful, politically aware women who understand exactly how damaging beauty standards are. We know better. And yet we still want to be skinny.
Not that long ago, we learnt the language of body positivity. But learning the correct things to say isn’t the same as changing how we feel. The truth is, I don’t think we ever stopped wanting to be thin. I should have known better than to inject myself. I know how the beauty industry works. So what did I think being thinner would achieve? Deep down, I still associated thinness with power and respect. Looking good in clothes meant feeling good about myself.
Which brings me to celebrities. Illness and personal circumstances can cause dramatic weight loss, and we’re rightly told not to scrutinise women’s bodies. But in trying to do the right thing, have we made it harder to question the beauty standards driving extreme thinness? We shouldn’t be asking why individual women are thin, but why thinness still holds such extraordinary cultural power.
I’m not here to lecture women about the perils of weight-loss injections or the ghastly “Wegovy burp” (utterly revolting, by the way). But I do want to know why someone like me, who didn’t medically need the drugs, or even qualify for them, was prepared to make herself so desperately ill just to be a bit thinner. I haven’t touched it since that week in Glasgow. Frankly, the thought of reliving those two days of absolute hell terrifies me.
But I’d be lying if there wasn’t still a tiny devil on my shoulder whispering, “Well, it’s there if you ever need it…” That’s the part I find most disturbing. I wish I could tell you that lying in that bed was my great feminist awakening. That I emerged with a new-found love for my body. I didn’t. But perhaps there’s something hopeful in finally admitting that. Because we can’t challenge beauty standards if we’re too ashamed to admit how deeply they’ve shaped us. And maybe the next time I hear that little voice telling me I need to be thinner, I’ll be better at recognising whose voice it really is.