Rowling: Fat anger

London, April 6: Waif-like models were condemned by J.K. Rowling yesterday as “empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones”.

The author of the Harry Potter novels said she did not want her daughters, Mackenzie, one, and Jessica, 12, to emulate women whose only function was to support the trade in “over-priced handbags and rat-sized dogs”. Writing on her website, she revealed that her “rant” was prompted by photographs in a magazine of a very young woman “who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder”.

She added: “She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world’s fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story.

“This girl needs help but, the world being what it is, they’re sticking her on magazine covers instead.”

Her comments are likely to rekindle the debate on the fashion industry’s promotion of super-thin models. Rowling said she saw the article last week while in London for the British Book Awards ? where Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was named book of the year ? and found she was unable to escape the subject of thinness during the trip.

She recounted a conversation with a young actor on the set of the latest Potter film, who was talking about a girl who was called “fat” by classmates, although she was anything but. The author added: “Is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny?

“I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain?”

After the awards, the subject came up yet again when Rowling bumped into a woman she had not seen for three years, who immediately commented on her figure.

She wrote: “The first thing she said to me: ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’ ‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby’.

“What I felt like saying was: ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no ? my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!”

Returning home to Edinburgh the next day, the multi-millionaire found cause for hope in a newspaper article on the pop star Pink, whose latest single, Stupid Girls, she described as “the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness".