Mm-hmm.

Um, and then literally at that bus stop, at that moment, I got a call from him saying, "Yeah, these agencies wanna meet you." And I was like, "Yeah, right.

I mean, it's, it's not gonna happen again." But I got signed.

But again, the minute I joined, it was like, "You need to tone up," you know? And I remember people saying, "You're, you're fine for a normal girl, but if you wanna be a model, you have to be different.

You have to be thinner." And so yeah, that ...

I mean, I, I'd kind of had eating disorders up until that moment, but this kind of gave me more of a reason to go into those eating disorders and, and really continue that abusive, kind of self-destructive behavior, you know? And then it was really weird.

I, I got dropped for being too big, and I wrote a Facebook post that went viral.

No.

Charli joined me in The Woman's Hour studio to talk Flesh.

I had always kind of been very disassociated from my body.

I never really understood why.

And a couple of years ago now, I was diagnosed, um, with complex PTSD, and to cut a very long story short, one of the reasons for that, according to the psychiatrist, was because of this ongoing, um, misogyny from men and a lot of the relationships I'd had with men.

And I remember feeling so embarrassed about it because I come from a very military family, and PTSD is obviously something we assume, you know, people, um, who've seen war, um, rightfully, you know, have experienced.

But for me, he was saying that if you have this buildup of, of ongoing day-to-day, um, traumas or, or things that you don't even think about, you know, eventually they all add up, and they all kind of burst in your brain.

How much of your worth has been tied up to your body and how it's perceived by others?

Oh my God, so much.

How much of your worth has been tied up to your body and how it's perceived by others?

Oh my God, so much.

I mean, someone, someone said to me, "Oh, you know, do you think that you've experienced more misogyny because you got into modeling?" And I think that whilst the modeling industry absolutely has a lot of weird people in it who kind of use it for their own advantage and to kind of get close to women and girls, and there are so many stories involving that.

I think, you know, even before that, from a child, maybe even before, maybe even as a toddler, really, um, I've been sexualized, and I think most women have, and we're just not aware of it in that kind of way.

I think we, um, we tend to think, you know, pedophilia, for example, I know it's a bit of a dark subject to bring it this morning, um, but I think that we tend to think of just a, a very rare few men who do that.

But actually, we're kind of seeing a lot of beauty standards molded by these pedophilic ideals, I suppose.

Um, this obsession with youth, with, with aging, with body hair, with, with wanting to stay very small and, and palatable as well.

But-