You may have heard that the latest iteration of Britain’s Next Top Model features a young woman, Jade McSorley, who is openly struggling with anorexia.

Now, I’m far from the kind of person who rolls their eyes at “attention seeking anorexics” or chortles about “bulimic cheerleaders” (and I’ve encountered plenty of self-identified progressives who do). To the contrary. I think there’s a lot of good that could come from a more open and honest dialogue around eating disorders - as well as the behaviours engaged in by a lot of teenage girls and young women that might not meet the medical definition of a disorder, but which aren’t far off, either in their practical application or in their mental effect. But something about this makes me deeply uncomfortable.

According to The Sun, the program will show McSorley being turned down for jobs on the provisor that she needs to gain weight - and she says the show gave her the support she required to do so.

But something about the whole thing reeks of publicity hunting and theatrics. The modelling industry is full of very slim girls (and they are usually girls, or teenagers, at least), and it’s also rife with eating disorders. I know several current and former models, and not one of them hasn't had one at one point or another. McSorley is tiny, yes, but she doesn’t look any different to what we’re used to seeing on the international catwalks or in high fashion magazines. And she doesn’t look much different to what we’re used to seeing amongst celebrities.

From an analytical point of view, you might say this is interesting: it highlights the extent to which one highly influential subculture’s (because most people don’t aspire to look like high fashion models, but the standards they set do trickle down) version of beauty is synonymous with physical and mental illness. (I’ve written on this before, but my computer’s being a bitch, so I’ll direct you instead to this excellent article by Emily Nussbaum.) Putting McSorley on the show forces us to acknowledge this.

But life is more than just a sociological image, so it’s actually really depressing. For one, because modelling is an industry in which naturally tiny women, often from not-so-wealthy backgrounds, are demanded to deprive their bodies of food in order to get work, in some cases literally risking their lives.

For another, because acknowledging this doesn’t always - or only - lead to productive political anger. It can also lead to the kind of unproductive political anger that drove my own eating disorder as much as depression did: “So you think I’m hotter when I starve myself and throw up my meals? Well, why not take it to the extreme and make you think I’m disgusting?” In other words: why is semi-starvation considered cool and attractive, and severe starvation (the visible kind) an embarrassment?

And a lot of the time, it doesn’t even go that far. The anger is only directed inwards, and seeing a woman who starves herself heralded as a potential beauty queen, only highlights sacrifices demanded by those who wish to be deemed likewise.