Real revolutions can only be started by those who have the most to gain. Nonetheless, few would have predicted this lot to ever storm the metaphorical barricades. Yet in an interview that is about to come out in a US magazine, that is exactly what Kate Moss, of all unlikely revolting peasants, has done, waving her pitchfork in anger alongside several of her fellow models.

Much - so very much - has been written about the fashion world's repulsive obsession with thinness. Noises have been made within the industry that things will change, particularly in the past few years, when so many models were suffering from serious malnutrition that it would have been just rude not to at least make a moue of sympathy. The fashion industry in this country has been particularly energetic in this regard, with various committees furrowing their brows over how to get out of this self-created vicious circle.

But the predictable truth is that when it comes to skinny models, nothing has changed. Nothing. The belief in the industry remains that thinness is symbolic of wealth and aspiration. Thus the more luxurious the label, the thinner the models. Unfortunately, these luxurious labels tend to wield the most power in the industry because they make the most money: therefore they spend the most on advertising and so control the editors of the fashion magazines. These editors are, then, muzzled, and cannot admit that attending a fashion show these days is all too often like watching some shocking Panorama report about a war camp, with skeletal and purple-eyed eastern European women walking up and down runways aimlessly.

Models have long been complicit in the lie that they are "just built like that" and eat "like pigs". (McDonald's is almost invariably mentioned by them at this point, though in all my years of walking past various McDonald's I have yet to see a supermodel in there.) Like the editors, they are dependent on the money from luxury brands, who still demand svelteness.

This is changing, however. Models have always been mini-celebrities. But because the luxury industry has become so enormous, models are now responsible for luring in even more money and are paid accordingly, with the select few raking in more in a day than Twiggy was probably paid in a year during the 60s.

But the irony is that the fashion industry may have created the monster that can, if not destroy it, then at least change it from within. Because while fashion editors have been able to say little and designers seemingly care even less, it is the models who actually might effect some changes. Recently, well-known models have finally admitted that not only were they encouraged to be skinnier than is healthy, but that they're angry about it. And the reason they are able to say such things is that their wealth and fame has given them a freedom of speech that apparently no one else in their industry has.

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."

Erin O'Connor and Karen Elson, like Moss, also started modelling as teenagers in the 90s and have also spoken out. O'Connor has been a vocal member of the Model Health Inquiry, the committee formed in the UK last year to look at the health problems suffered by models, and she has set up the Model Sanctuary, where models can get nutritional advice during London Fashion Week.

Elson has been the most vociferous of all. In 2002, she wrote a piece in Vogue describing how photographers and designers told her when she was 18 that she "needed to lose weight" and she promptly "stopped eating, [became] bulimic and [took] laxatives". In the current issue of Vogue she is even more passionate: "I felt like absolute shit as a teenager [when I was modelling] and all I had around me was people telling me I was right! I remember once I came back from a job in Paris and the stylist said to me, 'Have you been eating too many croissants, Karen?'"

Models may look like silent clothes-horses, but the fashion industry's veneration of all who are thin and beautiful has made them unexpectedly powerful figures - so powerful that they may yet force designers to pause before telling another cold and scared teenager that her developing breasts are making her look fat. Rarely has the power of celebrity been used with such irony, so unexpectedly and so well.

hadley.freeman@theguardian.com