A memoir of a brief career as a top model - and the brutally honest account of what goes on behind the scenes in a fascinating, closed industry.

Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre's story started like a teenager's dream: within months she was on the catwalks of New York's major fashion shows. But when fashion executives and photographers began to pressure her about her weight, forcing her to become ever thinner, Victoire's fantasy came at a cost.

An unflinching, painful expose of the uglier face of fashion, her testimony is a shocking example of how our culture's mechanisms of anorexia and bulimia can push a young woman to the point of suicide. It is the story of a survivor whose fight against poisonous illness and body image shows us how to take courage and embrace life.