Valeria Levitin, who is known as the world’s thinnest woman, tells an emotional story about how hard it was for her to beat anorexia and how scary it is that people are trying to look like her.
She talks about getting creepy fan mail from young girls who want to look like her because she is so skinny. The 39-year-old was born in Russia but now lives in Monaco. She speaks out against anorexia in an interview with The Sun, and she doesn’t want to accidentally become an example of a dangerous path.
Valeria’s mother was worried that Valeria might become overweight as a teenager, so she put her on tight diets when she was young. This caused Valeria to have a difficult relationship with her body. During her teenage years, she had strict dietary limits that included cutting out sweets and carbs because she wanted to be liked.
When she became a model, people told her she was still “too overweight,” which made her problems worse. At age 24, her light weight of only six stone made dancing dangerous for her because she could hurt herself.
Valeria saw more than thirty doctors over the next ten years, but her weight dropped to a dangerously low 3 stone 10 pounds every year. Some things still make her body sick, so she can’t eat them. It’s been so long since she’s had bread that she can’t remember how it tastes.
Valeria hasn’t been with anyone in ten years because she is sick and finds it hard to make new friends. She says that traditional medical treatments haven’t helped her gain weight and that the real reason is a “discordance between the body and the soul.”
Valeria now takes vitamins to lower her risk of getting bruises and pays close attention to avoid situations where she might trip and fall. She wants to become a mother through IVF and is thinking about going back to Moscow, where she feels more in touch with herself.
Valeria wants to start a family, but she wants to be healthy first. “I’ve never given up on anything in my life, and I’m not about to give up now,” she says, firmly rejecting anorexia. Her experience should serve as a strong wake-up call to be careful and aware when dealing with the disturbing allure of being too thin.