Models 'eat cotton balls to keep weight down'

A revealing documentary is set to blow the cover off the dark secrets of the glamour industry.

Talking about the gloomy side of the glittering fashion industry, supermodel Amy Lemons revealed that when she was a model, her agent asked her to eat one rice cake a day.

The Vogue cover model was 17 years old when her agent told her to do so to keep her weight down.

"And if that didn't work (eat) only half a rice cake," the New York Daily News quoted Lemons as saying in a segment of a new miniseries on the modelling industry for The Cut.

It is based on topics covered in the documentary expose 'Picture Me: A Model's Diary' by filmmakers Sra Ziff and Ole Schell.

The young directors interviewed several young models for their three-part series and the final segment was particularly jarring.

Lemons said that she had seen girls dipping cotton balls in juice and eating them as a way to keep their weight down.

"The level of the money you are making, it's like you can't say no," she said, underlying the reason.

"I think one of the reasons the film is so compelling is because we are showing footage that we never thought anyone else would ever see. It was only over time that we realised we had some really unique footage of a world that is so kept under wraps," concluded model-turned-director Ziff, who has walked in shows for Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Marc Jacobs.

Photograph: Cover of Vogue Magazine