Girls Aloud are Britain's most successful girl band - and suddenly the skinniest too. What appalling role models for young fans, says LIZ JONES. Of course, she will issue the inevitable denials. She has been 'working out'. She has been 'working hard'. She has a 'super-fast metabolism' that means she can eat like a horse. Or, and here's a good one: 'It is all down to 20 minutes of Pilates a day.' She has 'good genes' or, as she put it at the weekend: 'It's in my family.' But no matter how vehemently Nadine Coyle, the 24-year-old Girls Aloud singer who was photographed in London last week staggering uncertainly on legs thinner than any I've seen on the Paris catwalk over the past fortnight, might deny she has a problem, the evidence is clear. Comparing her physique now - the jutting wrist bones, the exposed collar bone, and those thighs, oh dear God, those thighs - with the voluptuous, normal shape she had even two years ago, belying her assertion that she has 'always had skinny legs', it is clear she has fallen victim to a very modern disease: pop goes the curves syndrome. Worryingly thin: Nadine Coyle's transformation has made her legs thinner than any I have recently seen on the Paris catwalk To see the transformation of the other members of Girls Aloud, Britain's most successful girl band ever, is also truly shocking. I sat next to Nicola Roberts in the front row during London Fashion Week last month and I did not recognise her. Not because she's ditched the fake tan and cut her red hair short. She was so thin she looked like a ghost. Cheryl Cole now has an enormous head (not helped because her hair is liberally enhanced with extensions, and back-combed within an inch of its life) on top of a body that has contracted as her bank balance has swollen. Sarah Harding? Well, she has changed from being a sexy, powerful, bronzed beauty to a weak, cadaverous shadow of her former self. I watched her model in the Vivienne Westwood show last season and she made the models appear positively porcine. Only Kimberley Walsh has retained her pre-fame shape - she has always been in possession of a small waist - but as we will find out, even the 'normal' one in the band feels guilty that she's not disciplined enough to be thin. Like most young women these days, she sees her body not as a source of joy, but a battleground. Of course, all five members of the band - who have sold 2.2million albums, with all their singles reaching the top ten - will say they have simply lost the baby fat. But what about all those assertions from the people in the fashion industry that the reason models are so thin is that they are still teenagers, and have yet to develop womanly curves? So, pop stars get thinner as they enter their 20s and models get fatter? It just doesn't add up, does it? Looking at the photos of the transformation of Girls Aloud from bubbly post-teens with tummies, breasts and hips to twentysomethings with huge, staring eyes and desperately tiny thighs, anyone can see they looked so much prettier before they lost the weight. And, despite the Government's hysterical diktats on obesity, these women were healthier as a size 12 or 14. Disappearing act: Girls Aloud's Cheryl Cole attracted attention for her dramatic weight loss after it emerged husband Ashley Cole had reportedly been unfaithful Women are not meant to have zero body fat. If we lose too much weight - and Nadine looks as if she has a BMI well below 17.5, a figure used by doctors to define 'very underweight' - hormones become disrupted, causing amenorrhea (cessation of the menstrual cycle), mood swings, facial hair, acne, flaking skin and brittle bones. Anyone looking at these photos and thinking, well, at least Girls Aloud are advocating diet and exercise in a Britain that is plagued by obesity, think again. Even 30 years ago, scientific evidence pointed towards the fact that dieting makes you not only unhappy, it makes you fat. A study in 2007 by the University of California, Los Angeles, found: 'It appears that dieters who manage to sustain a weight loss are the rare exception, rather than the rule. Dieters who gain back more weight than they lost may very well be the norm, rather than an unlucky minority'. You binge, you starve, you binge again. You want legs like Nadine's? Your metabolism will be shot to pieces. The only winners in this cycle are the slimming pill manufacturers and makers of 'foods' (relentlessly and mercilessly marketed at the type of women who buy into the whole Girls Aloud high-maintenance ethos) such as Muller Light and Special K. Role model? Sarah Harding is a shadow of her former self since the huge success of the pop group Female pop stars feeling obliged to lose weight is nothing new. When I interviewed Melanie C, or Sporty Spice, at the height of her fame, she spoke of her battle with eating disorders and her addiction to exercise (the two often go hand in hand). On a shoot in Los Angeles with Geri Halliwell, the woman who had been known as Curvy Spice, she stripped to her knickers in front of me to reveal the physique of a ten-year-old child. And there is Victoria Beckham, who was all soft curves and chubby cheeks when she shot to fame, but who has become ever more desiccated over the years. She admitted to an eating disorder in her autobiography, but appears to have never shaken its tenacious hold on her. Stick think: Victoria Beckham lost her soft curves and chubby cheeks once she became famous It seems that fame and money, rather than allowing these women to relax, to enjoy the rewards of success, has instilled in them only fear and insecurity. But pressure from record label executives, photographers, stylists, managers and public relations idiots is huge. I remember interviewing girl band All Saints in the early Nineties, and Shaznay Lewis told me she had been sat down to watch herself in a video and told to shape up or ship out. When she showed me her schedule, it included so many workouts you'd think she was an Olympic athlete. Why do women need to be marketed this way? You could ask the same question of casting directors, fashion designers and magazine editors. There is only one ideal of beauty, and if you dare to be a pop star, actress or model who ventures outside the teeny-tiny template, you'd better be very, very special. And even older, successful female pop stars are not immune. I was watching Whitney Houston's comeback on television last year with the American designer Michael Kors. 'I was trying to decide what size she is - is she a 4 or a 6?' he wondered out loud. This is how women - even those who have won Oscars and Grammies - are judged. The only barometer that counts is your dress size. Can we lay the blame for Nadine's thighs and Cheryl's lollipop head at the Louboutin-clad feet of fashion? The worlds of fashion and music are enmeshed, they feed off each other. When you watch the faces of pop stars and actresses in the front row of a fashion show, they are in awe of the far less famous models. They want to fit into the same clothes and steal their lucrative ad campaigns. And however disturbing it may be, weight loss is lucrative. As Cheryl Cole's dimensions have diminished, so her earnings have taken off. As well as being the face of L'Oreal hair care, last week she was unveiled as the £1.3million face of Italian luxury label Roberto Cavalli, following in the illustrious footsteps of Kate Moss, a woman famous for putting cocaine up her nose and nothing in her brain. It is telling that Kimberley Walsh, the only Girls Aloud member who has not shrunk into a two-dimensional cardboard cutout, who admitted to me she has 'a small waist and a big bum: I'm a 10 on top and a 12 below', has not landed a luxury label contract but is instead the face and body of New Look. The High Street chain wisely conducted a survey of its shoppers to find out which female celebrity they most want to emulate. Respondents rejected the then incumbent, the umbrella-spoke-limbed British Vogue cover star Alexa Chung, and came out in favour of Kimberley. Doesn't this tell us something important? That most women want to see someone who, yes, is beautiful, but who also looks sturdy enough to withstand a strong breeze? And if a High Street brand can acknowledge this, why can't high-end brands? 'Being thin is a status symbol,' a celebrity stylist told me. 'In LA, being thin means you've arrived - or at least, that you are ready to arrive. Only poor people are fat.' When I met Kimberley last year, I brought up Cheryl Cole's metamorphosis from slightly chubby teenager into a woman with more angles than a tent, and she insisted: 'You know what's really good and healthy about Cheryl is she doesn't have any food issues.' I got the impression that Kimberley felt a failure for being slightly larger than her band mates. 'I'm like any other normal girl, I go up and down and I can focus and be healthy for a few weeks and then I'll have a bad week,' she told me. 'If I ate what the rest of the girls ate I'd be three times the size, but at the same time I'm not quite vain enough to starve myself. I think it's quite good for young girls that in the band we've all got different figures.' Is it really 'quite good' for young girls when they see Nadine's figure now? Kimberley's statement shows they realise the impact they have on the way teenage and even younger girls act, shop, eat, exercise, everything. What makes me most angry about these pictures of the incredible shrinking Girls Aloud is that they display a wanton disregard for the wellbeing of their fans. Alongside No. 1 singles and sell-out concerts comes responsibility. I talked to a group of girls last week, aged between 14 and 17, and asked them to name a model whose looks they admire or lifestyle they would like to emulate. I was faced with blank stares. I then asked them to name an actress. 'Um, Kristen Stewart,' said one. Pop star? Four out of six named Cheryl Cole. They love her clothes, make-up and figure. I showed them the pictures of Nadine. Do they not think she is too thin? 'Maybe,' said one. 'But that's because she's famous and successful.' In these girls' eyes, it seems you can't be one without the other.LIZ JONES: Why stick-thin Girls Aloud make me so angry
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