LORNA MARSH So it's no longer the case that every girl aspires to be a perfect 10 - now it's more like the cadaverous 2. For that is the UK equivalent of the current super low size that is sweeping Hollywood seizing every vulnerable young starlet in its wake.

LORNA MARSH

So it's no longer the case that every girl aspires to be a perfect 10 - now it's more like the cadaverous 2.

For that is the UK equivalent of the current super low size that is sweeping Hollywood seizing every vulnerable young starlet in its wake.

And it's not just publicity they're hungry for. The likes of Nicole Richie and Lindsey Lohan must be starving themselves to achieve the new status symbol of the rich and famous - the 00 dress size label.

A single nought not being good, or small, enough, clothes manufacturers in the US are now catering for the super-skinny market by going less than zero.

And remember this is also the country that invented XXXL sizes for the other end of the market.

The land of plenty seems to have lost the middle ground in its extremes. You're either a supersize-me or a skinny-latte and it's symptomatic of a incredibly sad and worrying relationship the US - and us - have with food.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that we eat to sustain ourselves and for pleasure. Obese people guiltily munch their way through forbidden pleasures while skinnies either yearn to be able to dip into the buffet or do so, then purge themselves afterwards. It must be largely because we have reached an unprecedented obsession with weight. Why should we care? If celebs want to starve themselves, let them.

But it's more complicated than that when pictures of celebrities that would make Twiggy look positively curvaceous grace every celeb magazine going, with straplines declaring how thin they are, yet inside there are tips on Victoria Beckham's post baby diet.

Many of these magazines are read by girls as young as 10. And if they make grown women worry about their weight, what will they do to a sensitive pre-pubescent trying to shift the puppy fat?

Anorexic clinics are reporting surges in pre-teen and young teen admission.

And it is no wonder.

With every image of Kate Bosworth's painfully childlike frame or Victoria Beckham's 23-inch waist (the size of an average seven-year-old boy's) we become more used to that being touted as the feminine ideal until it no longer looks so odd.

Once, Elizabeth Hurley paraded in her safety-pin Versace frock. Now she would look big sat next to Richie et al.

There is another bizarre twist to the whole 00 phenomenon. Some claim clothes manufacturers have stuck the smaller labels on larger clothes in an act known as vanity sizing.

So we are apparently not getting smaller - our clothes are getting bigger.

Well, that may be true in the real world, but in celebsville there is no doubt that many are shrinking.

Known as lollipop ladies because their skinny frames make their heads look so large, the super-slim have taken over from their 80s pneumatic counterparts in tinseltown.

Come back Pamela Anderson in your red swimsuit and fake boobs, all is forgiven. At least you made us feel we could eat.