Continued from page 2

Extreme Measures

Originally posted Thursday September 28, 2006 06:00 AM EDT

Then: In 1990, a curvy Cindy Crawford, then 24, strutted her stuff in a Paris show. Now: Ukrainian model Snejana Onopka, 19, worked the pin-thin look at Miss Sixty in N.Y.C. Photo by: REX USA; JAMIE MCCARTHY / WIREIMAGE

So who is responsible for the heightened pressure to get thin? Stylists and fashion-show bookers blame designers for creating clothes that barely fit a size 2. "Maybe back in the day a size 6 could slide through, but [recently] it really has been a 2/4 dress size," says casting director Drew Linehan, who booked models for 12 shows during New York's Fashion Week. Designers, meanwhile, blame the bookers for hiring young, barely pubescent models, and models blame their alien metabolisms for keeping them insanely thin. In the midst of all the finger-pointing, experts are sounding the alarm: A new poll of college students conducted by the National Eating Disorders Association found that a shocking 20 percent of respondents had at some point suffered from an eating disorder. Additionally, "I am seeing younger and younger girls being affected – as young as 8 years old," says Carolyn Costin, director of the Monte Nido Treatment Center in Malibu.

Compounding the persistent cultural emphasis on skinniness is the fact that actresses are increasingly replacing models as designer muses and spokesmodels (Bosworth, for example, represents Revlon) and are feeling heightened stakes when they turn up at awards shows. "When you're walking down [the red carpet], there are truly like 100 photographers, and you do want to look your best," says Curb Your Enthusiasm's Cheryl Hines.

The result can be a saturation of relentlessly thin images from movies to magazines. "Young girls see celebrities losing weight, and the more famous they are, the more weight they lose," says Costin. "It creates a climate that says it's unnatural to be a natural size."

In interviews with PEOPLE at malls across the country, most teenage girls rejected Richie's body as "nasty" and "too skinny" but acknowledged that she and other stars serve as style role models. "Nicole's body is gross because her skeleton shows," says Kailey Koepplin, 17, of Eden Prairie, Minn. Other teens said they admire healthier-looking stars like Jessica Simpson ("She has cute clothes and she doesn't show too much"), Beyoncé and Jessica Alba ("She's tiny, but she's not too tiny").