This image is so dangerous to impressionable girls

Just as it looked like we were getting somewhere in terms of healthier body image ideals for young women, along comes actress Anya taylor- Joy with a throw-back to the 1860s.

On sunday, to celebrate the premiere of her film Dune: Part two in New York, the 27-year-old posted a shot of herself wearing the undergarments needed to pull off the dramatic Maison Margiela haute couture gown she wore on the red carpet – namely a corset straight out of the Victorian era, that was cinched so tightly it will have eating disorder counsellors clearing their diaries for the foreseeable.

When I first saw the shot, a number of thoughts hit me.

‘Anya, can you breathe?’ was the first. ‘How are your ribs?’ was the second.

thirdly and perhaps most importantly: ‘Why are you posting a headless backstage picture which fetishizes your dangerously constricted waist, in a garment famous for subjugating women over the centuries?’

the female body is a biological reality. Not a fashion template. Compressing it with corsets like this comes at a high cost, as the Victorians learned. Doctors at the time blamed corsets for anaemia, blood clots, fainting fits, infertility, miscarriage and digestive problems. As a former model Anya, and her defenders, may still come out saying this corset is just a fashion garment and is needed to make the dress work. Indeed Anya simply captioned the picture: ‘Merci… (to the designers) for making my dreams come true.’

Yet this is disingenuous, and Anya is clever enough to know it.

In reality the image is incredibly dangerous – especially to impressionable young girls.

As an author of ten parenting books, I have interviewed schoolgirls who wear waist-trainers under their school uniforms in a desperate effort to whittle down their waists. they also want to create the illusion of a bigger bottom, the look made fashionable by reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

these waist-training corsets – on sale all over Amazon and not surprisingly on offer in Kim’s own shapewear range skims – encourage young women to punish their own bodies for not conforming to unrealistic ideals.

But there’s a far more serious consequence of posting such an extreme image. In the course of researching my books, I have seen the pro-anorexia content on social media sites which sets the benchmark for the shape that women with eating disorders aim for.

I have listened to the heartbreaking stories of anorexic girls who, every time they look in the mirror, lay this extreme silhouette over their shapes, and want to rub out the parts of their bodies that don’t conform.

I’m not the only one to question Anya for this. to date her Instagram post has had thousands of comments.

ONE accuses the actress of ‘normalising starvation’; they tell her plainly that ‘this is not a healthy look for women at all’; and another has written a desperate plea: ‘You are going to kill people with this sort of beauty promotion. Please delete. Please.’

I find it hard to comprehend why Anya would have posted this picture – or at least not taken it down once her followers had made her aware of the potential damage it could be doing.

And sadly the only thing I could come up with was the need for publicity – the need to garner more attention around her red-carpet appearance for Dune.

As a grown-up actress, looked up to by so many young women, she needs to recognise that supposedly fashionable Instagram shots like this can turn into tomorrow’s anorexia inspiration.