Girls under Pressure

Girls under Pressure is the second book in the Girls series, written by Dame Jacqueline Wilson, DBE, a noted English author who writes fiction for children. It was published in 1998, the sequel to Girls in Love and followed by Girls out Late. It is aimed at pre-teen and teenage readers.

Like the rest of the series, Girls under Pressure is told from the viewpoint of Eleanor "Ellie" Allard, a chubby thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her father, her stepmother, Anna, and her little half-brother, Eggs.

Plot

The story starts where Ellie and her two best friends, Magda and Nadine, are Christmas shopping at the Flowerfields Shopping Centre. While they shop, they notice a large buzz of an event going on upstairs. Nadine wonders if it is television. Magda replies, "Wow, I hope so" and steers the other two upstairs.

It turns out to be a modelling competition for Spicy magazine, which Ellie discovers after seeing a lot of pretty and thin teenage girls getting their photos taken. Ellie stares in horror as she realises what she has been in the queue for. She witnesses Magda and Nadine being photographed, seeing how Nadine is "model-girl" thin. It is Ellie's turn to be photographed, but she runs away, pushing through the queue as she goes, with the result that one of the girls says, "She's far too fat!" (for modelling). Ellie, hurt and upset, leaves and goes home. This is where her obsessive dieting starts and she battles with a messy form of dieting, making herself sick once or twice, although it is not actually an eating disorder as she finds it very easy to recover as soon as she realises she must stop.

It worsens when Nadine gets through to the first round of the Spicy modelling competition. Ellie tries to be supportive but envies all of the models and their bodies. However, Nadine is not chosen to go through to the next round and the two quarrel, but make it up on the way home. Meanwhile, Magda has been on a date with Mick and is nearly a victim of date-rape.

Ellie has once done an Art project with Zoe, a highly intelligent student who has been put up a year to take her GCSEs early. Ellie is motivated to lose weight by not eating as Zoe had a "biggish bum" and now she has "amazing cheekbones", due to her lack of food and lots of exercise. However, Ellie eventually stops after hearing that Zoe got so thin she collapsed and nearly died of heart failure. She goes to visit the hospital for girls with eating disorders that Zoe is in, and she is shocked by how sad and small Zoe looks. So, she promptly stops her diet, as she does not want to die.