Wendyl Nissen: Fat in the fire

"When Karl Lagerfeld makes a call, then we can be sure it's really going to happen," said my daughter as she prepared for school.

We had been discussing the shocking decision by French Elle magazine to put plus-size model Tara Lynn on its April cover.

"Or Alexander McQueen, if he hadn't died. RIP," she added, checking her hair in the mirror. "Of course, you heard what Anna Wintour said?"

"No, I don't actually follow Anna Wintour," I replied, glancing up from the newspaper.

"She says that if people want to stop girls from being anorexic, then they should stop making clothes that fit them."

"Last time I looked, Anna Wintour seemed pretty scrawny," I replied. "What on earth would she wear?"

"Mum, not nice. You're more Grace Coddington than Anna, anyway," she said, before heading out the door.

Grace is Anna's right-hand woman and, in my opinion, the brains behind Vogue magazine.

The creative director wears no make-up, is a size 14/16, has long, mad, frizzy hair and clomps around the illustrious Vogue offices in flat sandals. She is designer frump.

"Charming," I whispered as I took another bite of my wholegrain toast slathered in lemon passionfruit curd and ricotta, all homemade.

I hope my daughter was trying to say that, like Grace, I couldn't give a toss about my size, I wear make-up only on special occasions and my high heels have been banished. But this has only been a recent state of events.

One which has come after years of shoving non-food down my throat in the name of dieting: Artificial sweeteners that taste like poison, low-fat dairy products that have had all the nutrition taken out of them and neatly packaged, chemical-rich 300-calorie dinners made by dieting companies and which taste like plastic and just made me feel ill, depressed and, well, plastic.

About two years ago, I figured that if I exercise most days, eat fresh, real, not-interfered-with food and limit my alcohol intake, I will be healthy and therefore happy. I was right. I never get laid low for weeks with flu like I used to, and I am rarely unhappy.

Yet striding around with this new confidence has its pitfalls. Like being stuck at a table with tiny women discussing how often they need to top up their Botox injections, only eating an entree because "I'm as fat as a house" and tottering perilously on five-inch heels every time they need to go to the loo. I fixed that problem. I don't sit at those tables any more.

Or, like the time I was having coffee with a very gorgeous, very tiny woman. We sat in the sun and when we stood up I noticed with horror that my dress, which had nestled itself comfortably around my stomach, was stained with sweat. But I doubt she noticed and I'm sure she sweats too, in tiny droplets on the back of her ankles.

Or those occasions when someone takes a picture of you side-on when you have only just got used to seeing yourself face-on in the mirror and accepting it. And the fact that no decent designers make a size 16, and if they claim they do, they never have it in stock.

But the thing that can save women like me is the refusal to compare ourselves to others.

Wishing I looked like Lorraine Downes, beautiful even when she poses without make-up for a magazine cover, is not going to make me look like her. When you pin up that aspirational picture of the woman you want to look like or photos of your slender 19-year-old self on the fridge, you are not setting a goal, you are looking for a new gene pool.

Plus-size models on covers have no effect on me because they are just beautiful women, like all women who are there to sell magazines. But maybe they'll have an effect on the designers and encourage them to let people perceive beauty as happiness rather than starvation.