Jess Cartner-Morley’s article (‘It feels like the progress is getting reversed’: how fashion fell out of love with curves, 16 November) resonates in an uncomfortably personal way. It takes me back to the year 2000, when I was 15 and in the grip of a subtle yet destructive eating disorder. It evokes a sort of perverse nostalgia for the protruding hips and amenorrhea I celebrated as evidence of my enviable thinness. It is too simplistic to blame the size zero trend for my eating disorder, but it exacerbated and legitimised it.
If we allow fashion to embrace size zero again, we are firmly reversing progress. How we see female bodies represented in the media and fashion matters. In an age of social media, parents can scarcely police the images to which their children are exposed, so there is a moral imperative to portray inclusive and healthy bodies.
I have spent years on a journey toward embracing my curves, but progress is always precarious. The desire to be skinny lingers in my muscle memory. Let us not make the mistake of going backwards for the sake of fashion.