Which is why I try on a daily basis to instil in my daughters that whatever their shape or weight, they should always strive to feel good about themselves.
As a teenager, along with most of my peer group, I ate like a sparrow, because to be super thin was to be super pretty, clever, popular and nice.
'Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton and Girls Aloud'
Then I got a boyfriend who, on grabbing me around the waist one day, visibly recoiled at having felt more bone than flesh. His timely revulsion promptly gave me back my appetite.
Mine was a mild flirtation with self-control rather than a full-blown eating disorder, and was over very quickly.
But my daughters and their friends have skinny role models such as Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton and Girls Aloud. The more successful these girls get, the more emaciated they appear.
You're not telling me any one of them would give two hoots if their boyfriends said they would fancy them more if there were more of them to fancy.
Meanwhile, this study of self-esteem in girls and young women has found that by the age of 16 nine out of ten desperately want to change the way they look. A startling quarter of them would go so far as having plastic surgery.
Just as worrying, it says that a third of girls aged between 15 and 17 won't go to the beach or pool because they can't bear the way they look in a swimming costume.
The thought of my girls having similar crises of confidence at that age horrifies me. Whether they're a downy size 8 or voluptuous 16, I hope they spend their teens celebrating the beauty of their youth.
'So who is to blame?'
I would much rather see them showing off on the beach, whatever their shape or size, than skulking behind an oversized robe in case somebody judges them for the way they look.
So who is to blame for the production of this generation of girls weighed down with the burden of self-loathing?
First in the dock are the glossy magazines that unashamedly equate beauty with slenderness and which our daughters (and we, their mothers) eagerly devour.
And surely we must blame a government that pushes trendy media courses to school kids which make traditional home economics seem positively archaic.
Scrap the teaching of proper cookery and sell off a few hundred playing fields while you're at it. Genius. But that's all rather obvious. Perhaps we should also look closer to home.
Cutting out whole food groups to cure illness, to stave off mental decline, to get a flatter tummy has become the latest zeitgeist. Everyone's a nutritional expert these days, but how does that help our children view good food simply as the fuel they need to grow?
It seems to me that food is increasingly being portrayed as the enemy. And what about the mothers who make scathing comments about some passing teenager who flashes, without shame, a less-thantaut midriff in the name of fashion?
Don't they realise that their snide remarks, meant to stop their daughters from making similar faux pas, only instil in them the idea that the female form is there to be judged by all and sundry.
This is the world we live in. We can't opt out of it. But we can encourage our children to like themselves ... and easier still, enjoy their food.
In our house, all talk of diets is banned. As far as my daughters are concerned, good grub is something to relish. Each evening they eat home-cooked food, often which they've helped to prepare.
Meanwhile, their school takes a Big Brother attitude to healthy eating. Teachers regularly inspect pupils' playtime snacks and award extra play-time to the class who take in the healthiest. It's an approach other schools would do well to adopt.
I tell my children that people starve themselves to be thin, and for a while look pretty good for it.
But eventually they get sick; their organs get damaged; some even die. Granted, it's an alarmist approach; but these are worrying times. It's also the truth and I want them to know it.
When they ask what they should do if they ever get fat - for that to be a concern for girls of seven and ten is worrying in itself - I say eat a little less, move a little more.
And every time I hear Bronte, my eldest, lament the curvaceous good looks of her former heroine, the singer Hilary Duff, now a gaunt and poorly looking version of her former self, I breathe a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, for now at least, Bronte admires the shapely look of girls such as Charlotte Church and Billie Piper. And I am doing nothing to discourage her latest pastime, where she flicks through newspapers and magazines, dismissing out loud the uber-thin as 'too skinny' as she turns the pages.
I hope it rubs off on Merrily, but I'll be keeping a close eye on her nonetheless, listening out for clues that she might not be as comfortable in her own skin as she should be. Frankly, in light of this latest report, I would be a fool not to.
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by RACHEL HALLIWELL, Daily Mail -