I'm so glad that girls can have role models who don't have to starve themselves to feel normal.

When I first tried to join a model agency, I was a size 12, which I considered to be normal for my 5 foot, 5 inch height. They looked at me as though I was mad. I was 9 1/2 stone. They told me to lose 2 stone and then come back. I really wanted to model so I dieted and lost a stone. I thought 8 1/2 stone would be enough, but they wanted me to lose more. A few years before I got into modelling, glamour models were curvy, Maria Whittaker, Sam Fox, Kathy Lloyd. I couldn't believe that now glamour models were meant to be size 8.

As hard as I tried, I couldn't get my weight down any more so I started to skip meals. I tried to imagine the food on my plate was mouldy and horrible to put myself off eating it. When I went out with my husband to a restaurant I had to eat, but I felt so guilty. The food in my stomach felt like it was contaminating me and I had to get it out of my body, so I started making myself sick. I would lie in bed at night and hear my stomach rumbling. I couldn't sleep, my nails got brittle and started to crumble, but I was thin.

My model agent suddenly started to notice me and started sending me for more castings. I was getting steady work from lingerie catalogues and Calendar shoots abroad. In my agency, there were two other blonde models, Debbie and Vicky who had curvy bodies like my old one. They were told to lose weight too. Vicky was soon thinner than me and she told me that she had had Liposuction.

She started landing all the jobs, then Debbie had Liposuction and she started landing all the jobs. So I had Liposuction. It was the most painful experience of my life. I looked like I had been run over by a bus and I still had to work with all the pain.

Eventually your body gets tired of living on no food. My hair started to fall out and I had dark shadows under my eyes. Christmas came and there was no work around till March. That's when photographers start casting for Calendar trips. Over the months since Christmas, I had put on over a stone. A photographer said to me, "I hate seeing models after Christmas because their all white and fat like you".

I was so upset so I went back on a diet and booked in for more Liposuction. I went to a different surgeon because the last one refused to do it again. I was given a local anaesthetic so I was wide awake during the process. The pain was unbelievable, I was screaming with the pain and the nurse who was holding me down told me not to be such a baby.

I started getting work again but after a while your weight starts to creep up on you because you have to eat to live. So I went back to making myself sick. I have put my body through so much abuse. My husband was watching me to make sure I was eating and one day he heard me making myself sick. He was so upset. I told him I wanted more Liposuction and he put his foot down. No more modelling if this is what it's doing to you.

I started training to be a make-up artist, and for the first time in my life I could eat without feeling guilty. I have been a make-up artist for many years now. Two years ago, I went to a fancy dress party as Marilyn Monroe. Everyone told me I should be a Marilyn Look-alike as they thought I looked just like her, so, I went to London's Top look-alike agency, Susan Scott's Look-alikes, and she signed me up.

Now being extra curvy has won me work because you can't have a skinny Marilyn. I get tons of fan mail from men and women, telling me that they love my body. I used to wear clothes that hid my curvy hips and bum but now I wear pencil skirts to show them off. I'm a size 14 on the bottom and a 16 on top.

I wish I had been a Marilyn Look-alike sooner. In the 50s women were so glamorous and sexy. They were healthy and I'm in more demand now than when I was thin. It is a strange thing though, that men are happy with my size but women have a problem with it, they make fun of me because of my big chest and hips, and I've had to put up with a lot of abuse from women. I thought it would be the other way round. Women shouldn't be threatened by me; I look how a woman should look. I'm glad to be different.

Hope this helps girls to be what they want to be, not what people think they should be.