"I don't blame the models, they're not making the decision. I don't particularly blame the magazines," says Lili Evans, 15-year-old schoolgirl and feminist campaigner. "It's everywhere you go. The bus stop. The TV. Everywhere, we are bombarded all the time with images of girls looking thin."
Evans, who vents her frustration at the ubiquity of tall, thin girls on Twitter hashtag #TYFA, or Twitter youth feminist army, is one of the handful of British members of Spark, a US youth-based activist movement, which this week launched a petition to encourage retailer H&M to use plus-sized models in its shops.
The cause is gaining support in the UK among campaigners and even politicians. Equalities minister Jo Swinson held the first governmental seminar on the subject last week at which 14 experts from the UK, Canada, the US and Australia presented evidence that the problem leads to eating disorders and other public-health issues. Statistics from campaigners Body Gossip suggest one in 10 young people will develop an eating disorder before they reach the age of 25 (with 1.6 million currently officially diagnosed in the UK ); three children in a typical British classroom are self-harming and 30 per cent of boys and 70 per cent of girls aged 11-19 cite their relationship with their body their number one worry.
The issue is the central theme of an all-day event at the South Bank, London, today to celebrate UN's International Day of the Girl with performances by Body Gossip, which uses stories submitted by the public to produce theatre and films and to talk to teenagers in schools. The stories come from a 20-year-old girl recovering from anorexia, a stripper, a gay sculptor, a personal trainer and a disabled girl, among others. One story starts: "Today I threw 237 celebrity-obsessed magazines in the recycling and I feel better for it."
One thing that surprised me – given the increasing use of the word "fat" to denote general opprobrium among schoolchildren – is that the Body Gossip stories challenge the idea that body image problems are all about a skinny ideal.
Natasha Devon, a co-director of Body Gossip, says her frequent trips to schools to talk to 14-18-year-olds show increasing anxiety among boys as well as some slim girls. "There's a big concern among naturally slender girls that they have the wrong body shape when it is more fashionable to be hourglass."
Another problem she describes as a huge issue is the phenomenon of young boys taking steroids and other illegal substances to try to ape the toned hulks on the cover of magazines such as Men's Health. "This is very definitely a campaign for both boys and girls," she says.
"We don't want plus-sized models, which could create their own paradigm, but a whole range of body types," says Devon
The show, led by Ruth Rogers, a performer who set up Body Gossip seven years ago, also includes the testimony of a girl from Nigeria who points out that larger sizes are considered the "height of sexiness there" highlighting the fact that cultural assumptions need to shift before real change is made.
Despite the efforts of Swinson, the message is not yet getting through to other government departments and Body Gossip has published an open letter to education secretary Michael Gove saying he should reinstate funding for personal, social and health education. Targeting the advertising industry is never going to be the quickest way to bring about change either. As Devon says, "Most advertisers want you to feel bad about yourselves so you'll buy their stuff and feel better."
