Model Georgina Hayes today spoke out about how the relentless pressures of her career ruined her health and caused her to literally waste away.

Georgina Hayes

Georgina, now 21, grew up in Sheriff Hutton, near York. By the age of 18 she was on the catwalks of Milan mingling with the likes of Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell.

But after relentless pressure from her model agency to slim to a waif-like six stone, she developed anorexia and bulimia and plunged into a black depression.

Today, she urged other young models not to let their health and their lives be ruined by pressure from the fashion world to be ever slimmer.

After a string of mundane jobs in York and then in Nottingham, where she now lives, Georgina has now got over the depression that she suffered in Milan.

But in a warning to other young models, she said today: "I would just say to them, go out and be your own person. Have some fun and don't be false or pretend. I don't want anybody else to get destroyed by the industry."

Georgina started modelling at the age of 13 when she was a pupil at Easingwold School, working in her spare time and school holidays.

After working for a model training agency in Harrogate, she moved to work for an agency in Manchester when she was just 16 and was chosen to go to Milan, in a group also including TV presenter Sara Cox.

She stayed there for two years.

"Before I even left for Milan the agency said I had to slim down. I am 5ft 81/2in and went out there weighing nine-and-a-half stone and came back about six stone.

"At the end of it I was very sick - I just couldn't do it any more. I just decided I was leaving one day and flew home.

"I had had anorexia and bulimia for years and it's taken me two-and a-half years to pull myself around."

When Georgina got back, she moved into Townend Street in York and took mundane jobs working as a silver service waitress at the Viking Moathouse hotel and working for Wallis ladieswear shop and Pizza Hut while she received medical help.

When her parents Barry and Kathleen said they were going to retire to Nottingham, she decided to move with them to start a new life.

Georgina has had a string of factory jobs in Nottingham but now plans to either go back to college or start a new career.

In the meantime, her comments today have attracted national media interest and she has already approached by a TV company asking her to appear.

She is back up to eight-and-a-half stone, but is still conscious of being skinny.

Louise Wells, a dietician at York Health Trust, said the healthy weight range for someone who was 5ft 81/2in tall was anywhere between nine stone nine pounds and 12 stone.

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