Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher before their separation. Source: AP THE sight of an emaciated Demi Moore in the weeks before her hospitalisation for what some are saying is anorexia shows that even the world's most celebrated beauties suffer body image crises.
In Moore's case, the recent separation from her much younger husband of six years, Ashton Kutcher, 33, may have been the catalyst for self-hate.
But it can't have been easy for the 49-year-old actor to live with gossip websites that scrutinise her body daily for telltale signs of cellulite or old age.
In a recent interview, Moore admitted to a lifelong love-hate relationship with her body.
"What scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I'm really not lovable, that I'm not worthy of being loved."
It could be the cri de couer of her sex.
You can't open a woman's magazine without reading about already svelte, even gaunt, celebrity females supposedly popping diet pills and starving themselves to collapse to fit into their Golden Globes gowns.
And it's never too young to join in the body-scrutiny game. In France, a 10-year-old is modelling for Vogue and 13 and 14-year-olds are common on the catwalk. Girls whose hairless, breastless bodies are nowhere near womanhood are dressed up in sexy clothes and photographed in provocative poses to sell clothes to women their grandmother's age.
The Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney reported last year that the number of children admitted for anorexia and other eating disorders had tripled in a decade, including patients as young as eight.
The push to be hot and sexually attractive, to conform to some idealised image of female perfection at a younger and younger age, is at the root of this epidemic of self-hate.
Girls are the canary in the coal mine of a sick society.
It's hard enough being a teenage girl at the best of times.
But these days, bombarded with the toxic messages of a pornified culture, your every impulsive moment Facebooked and Tumblred for posterity, forced to grow up far too young, it can be overwhelming.
It's no wonder, then, that former schoolteacher Danielle Miller sees girls afraid to grow up. We're a society that idolises youth, she said last week.
Why would we be surprised if young girls are fearful of womanhood?
In her latest book, The Girl With the Butterfly Tattoo: a girl's guide to claiming her power, Miller dispenses commonsense advice to girls and their mothers about how to navigate the rocky road of adolescent hormones in an unforgiving era. She finds when she gives workshops at schools, girls all have body image angst, even though we talk of this being an empowered generation.
The ultimate glass ceiling is the bathroom mirror.
Miller points to statistics suggesting 94 per cent of teenage girls wish at some point that they were more beautiful, while a quarter want to completely overhaul their appearance.
THERE is something all girls and women share: we are at war with our bodies because there is a war waged on our bodies.
We are surrounded by words and images dictating what beauty is and the definition is very narrow. It is now one colour, one shape, one size. The standards are impossible to attain.
Miller describes body self-hate as the new normality, with women so anxious they are turning increasingly to surgery to correct perceived imperfections.
The increase in vaginal surgery to conform with some airbrushed porn fiction of female genital perfection is a case in point.
Miller points to the flow-through to girlhood. For instance, the biggest binge-drinking demographic in Australia, she says, is teenage girls.
In our hypersexualised culture, there is increasing pressure on teen girls to gain attention by doing stripper-like dance moves and bare all when they go out with friends.
Girls tell me this is easier to do when they are drunk.
Technology amplifies the normal risk taking and impulsive behaviour of teens.
Everything is recorded for the world to see and remember.
Miller says mothers must be aware of their own behaviour as role models and need to talk openly about sex to their daughters.
We know porn is affecting the way young girls see themselves and their perception on sexual relationships.
More than ever, that conversation is necessary to help our young people understand their emerging sexuality.
The days of hoping they could pick it up from leaving a book on the kitchen bench are gone.
But Miller also pays tribute to this generation of girls and teenagers, who she sees as remarkably resilient.
"We need to credit the girls who are making healthy choices and aren't running off sexting and binge drinking."
And she encourages all women to mentor younger females: we have an obligation to give of ourselves to the next generation.
They do yearn to look at confident strong women.
Most important, though, is to teach girls to love themselves, as the best immunisation against a toxic culture.
Take a lead from 19-year-old Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus.
When she was mocked last year for gaining a little weight, she posted a photo of a painfully emaciated woman on Twitter and wrote: "By calling girls like me 'fat', this is what you're doing to other people. I love MYSELF, and if you could say the same, you wouldn't be trying to hurt others."
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