With her healthy size ten frame, Eleanor Glynn’s modelling aspirations seemed as natural as her slim body. But while she was beautiful enough to be Miss England, she was rejected by the fashion industry for being the wrong shape.

Last night the 20-year-old weighed in on the “size-zero” debate, saying that fashion’s fixation with rake-thin models could lead to young women developing eating disorders.

“It affected me at one point until I won Miss England but the girls who don’t have other doors opening can fall on eating disorders,” she said.

Ms Glynn, who was knocked back by three modelling agencies because she was a size eight to ten, said that size zero was “not an achievable look”.

“I would like to see girls like, for example, Kate Winslet and Liz Hurley [on the catwalk]. I’m not saying they should ban all super-slim models but I do think it would be good to have more variation of size.”

Health experts have expressed serious concerns about the preference for models with 22-inch (55cm) waists, the average measurement of an eight-year-old girl.

The British Fashion Council has come under fire for refusing to ban size zero models from London Fashion Week, despite bans made by fashion shows across the rest of Europe. Instead, the council wrote to designers asking them to use only healthy-looking girls aged over 16 and said that it would also set up a task force to look at ways of promoting a healthy body image.

Ms Glynn said that the fashion industry was acting irresponsibly. “They seem to have been going for the gaunt, almost cocaine look for the past few years and I think it is time we have some variation,” she said. “We are almost being brainwashed at the moment into believing this is reality.”

Her comments came after Winslet, a long-term campaigner against unrealistic body shapes, announced that she would sue Grazia, a women’s weekly magazine, over claims that she had visited a diet doctor in California.

The actress said: “I know I am a role model to young women, it’s a role I take very, very seriously. I would never want anyone to think I was a hypocrite.”

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