A snapshot from the past. It’s 1993, a flat in Edinburgh, and two young women aged 19 and 20 are in the kitchen. They are having an afternoon snack. One is cooking up some veg, without any oil; the other is eating an apple, her fourth of the day. She’s hungry, but has promised herself not to eat between meals unless it’s fruit. Dinner – a small baked potato and reduced-fat cheese – is still a couple of hours away and the scent of her flatmate’s food is tormenting her, but neither girl is allowing herself any carbohydrate right now, no matter how much their stomachs growl. There will be no pasta or rice with the veg. Why? Because everyone knows that carbs make you fat.

That was me, by the way, apple girl. I shouldn’t have been worrying about my body shape – I should have been much more concerned about eating enough to support my busy lifestyle – but I did worry. I was part of the calorie-counting Bridget Jones generation and thought about it way too much.

I’ve remembered all this after reading this week about the relentless online scrutiny of women like Marie van Heel and Ariana Grande. My younger self would have been horrified to think so little had changed.

When I look back now and wonder why I was so hard on myself, I find the reasons would be only too familiar to girls today. Fragments of memory come back to me: the love-hate relationship with women’s magazines, which curated an ideal of female beauty which I would never conform to; the endless media discussion of fad diets; the praising of tall thin women and of supermodels with their “perfect” unattainable looks and glamorous lifestyles (we did not appreciate the intense pressure and........

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