Arabella Weir

As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so. ”

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list. ”

Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim? ”

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London. ”

I know a lot of people fear the rougher types who might be at a state school, but surely it is better to know who they are and how to deal with them than for that kind of child to appear as a completely different species to yours. ”

If you have any power at all from being popular, then you have a duty to help people out. ”

There is an inherent tolerance and kindness in the state school teenagers I know. ”

Society prizes a girl for being thin more than anything else she might bring to the table. ”

Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily, I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight, eventually building up a different source of self-worth. ”

The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted. ”