by Anna Gekoski
And in terms of the differences between how celebs and normal people are treated, I would say that the celebrity is certainly not going to be excluded or pilloried and, if anything, I would imagine gains a bit in a sense, as you become interesting. And in a funny sort of way you get forgiven because you’re an artist or something: you can be a bit mad and that’s alright. Look at any amount of entertainers, writers, poets, musicians – it’s always argued that people in history have been bipolar in one way or t’other. That’s the artistic temperament. It’s almost obligatory really:
‘I’ve got an ambition to be a writer.’
‘Are you bipolar?’
‘No.’
‘Well, forget it.’
So I think there is a bit of a danger with it becoming the celebs’ illness. On the other hand, the organisations and people I’ve spoken to tend to say: ‘No, we relate to the fact that somebody in the public eye is prepared to talk about it and say they have that trouble too.’ And if that makes them feel less sensitive about it, or whatever, then good.
ALICIA DOUVALL
Former model
‘To me, being body dysmorphic is like being imprisoned by your own mind because you’re locked into the most powerful thing in the world, which is your own self. And you know, there’s no answer, there’s no escape from it . . . It’s very hard to have a normal life in any shape or form: you can’t have a proper relationship, you can’t believe anyone who says you’re beautiful or good looking, you can’t walk down the street or be in crowded places because you think everyone’s going to be looking, and pointing, and laughing at you. You’re just never happy with yourself.’
Born Sarah Howes in Horsham, West Sussex, in 1979, Alicia Douvall became a glamour model while still a teenager, regularly appearing on Page 3 and Playboy TV. She has taken part in several reality TV shows, including Celebrity Love Island and Celebrity Rehab, and is the subject of three television documentaries: Rehab: Alicia Douvall, Glamour Models, Mum & Me, and Glamour Model Mum, Baby & Me. Alicia began to suffer from anorexia and bulimia as a teenager and later with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which has led to her having more than 350 surgical and cosmetic procedures. Having attended a rehabilitation clinic in the US three times, she has now started her own organic skincare company, Douvall’s. Alicia lives in London with her two daughters, Georgia and Papaya.
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My dad was a local Conservative councillor, a self-made millionaire, and just a very, very strict person. It felt like we all lived in fear. In what way? Gosh, it’s awful, I don’t even know where to start. Well, for instance, most people would look forward to a holiday, or a birthday, or Christmas Day, but I absolutely dreaded them. They were a complete nightmare for me because we were in close proximity to my dad and it always felt like he was in a really bad mood because he wasn’t at work, so it seemed as if he was always shouting. If I was sat with him and did anything wrong it felt as if I was in so much trouble that my life was over. Like, when I was opening my presents, I was always so careful to behave right, and be grateful, and not rip the paper, because I was scared that if I did anything to upset him he might take them back. So I never looked forward to Christmas or birthday presents because I thought they could get taken away at any time.
I also used to really hate going away on summer holidays. If we went on holiday we weren’t allowed to leave the country, so it was always camping or boating holidays in the UK, and it was always raining so we were stuck in a really small space. And it seemed to me that my dad didn’t like noises, that he didn’t like behaviour, that he was intolerant of other people, of anything that wasn’t in his norm, that wasn’t acceptable to him. So if we were going on a week’s holiday, or ten days’ holiday, I always thought that it was only going to be half the time and that we would come home early.
Then there was our appearance. Bodies were meant to be disgusting, we weren’t meant to show our bodies in any shape or form, so I didn’t feel I could wear skirts that were above the knee or anything low cut. We also had to wear sensible materials, we couldn’t have designer labels. So we bought our clothes from Millets, which sold camping equipment – Dad told us that it was hard-wearing, so we all wore camping gear. And I remember for birthdays and Christmases and stuff we got Swiss Army Knives and our school bags had to be camping bags or army bags, because army bags, he said, were very long lasting and practical.
And it felt as if he was always putting me down. My dad was actually a very intelligent man but he made me feel like I was just pathetic and nothing. And that, to me, was worse than getting, you know, a punch or hit, because you knew physical violence was wrong and that makes them in a weaker position. So he called me names and I was the one who he said was ugly and had no brains. He’d try to help me with my homework and stuff but I was always frightened that if I didn’t get it – because I was actually dyslexic – then he’d lose his temper. It felt like he had no patience whatsoever – I thought he could just blow up at any time. And I remember he called me stupid and it was a family joke that I was ugly and I accepted it, because as a child you just believe everything your parents say, you don’t think they’re lying.
The whole thing was very, very anxious-making, so I think as a child I had to learn many, many coping mechanisms. When I thought that he was going to start shouting or calling me names I used to concentrate on part of his ear, or his head, or a hair, and think of rainbows and block my feelings out completely. Then I would escape to my room to my Barbie dolls, which were my little world, and I’d sit and I’d make my Barbies perfect: I’d wash their hair and make sure their hair was perfect and their outfits were perfect. I became obsessed with Barbies. In my mind, Barbie was successful and beautiful, and had it all. So I had this whole collection of Barbies which were my escapism.
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So when I was sent to boarding school at . . . ten or eleven? . . . I started thinking: ‘If only I could escape my life.’ You know, my name was Sarah Howes, I had dark, frizzy, curly hair, and I was normal looking but in my mind I was really, really ugly. So I started experimenting on changing my looks and I used to spend all my pocket money on hair dyes, or tanning beds, or slimming tablets. And from the age of probably about twelve I realised that I was no longer going to be Sarah Howes, I was going to be somebody else, and it made me happy because it gave me hope: I realised I could change who I was.
And anything that was extreme was part of my big plan to change. At school we used to do famines for Africa. And I did do a few famines for Africa but then I took it to the next level and I was always doing famines for Africa. I starved myself for days on end. Maybe anorexia is different things to different people but to me I didn’t eat and, if I did eat, I’d just have a lettuce leaf for breakfast, you know, half a cucumber slice for lunch. And I carried on like that until I was literally just surviving off water and I’d be really happy if I went three, four days without food. I think I can remember feeling that I was really in control, that I had real power, and I was successful at something. It made me feel great. I had a plan and when I was doing my plan – on the strictest diet you can imagine – then I’d also be doing exercise and I’d really push myself. I’d get up at six and go running every day, and then I’d be playing tennis, and I’d skip lessons so I could exercise some more.
I was also bulimic at certain points so I’d binge on certain foods – like sweets and stuff – and then I’d throw up afterwards. Again, I think bulimia is a sense of control that gets out of hand and you think you can cheat. I was really in control and then I’d think: ‘Oh no, I really need something’, and then I’d eat, I’d pig out. And then I’d feel really guilty and the only way I could get rid of the guilt was to become bulimic, so I became bulimic when I binged. I remember a friend taught me how to do it ages ago at school. She said: ‘Oh, it’s really easy to stick your fingers down your throat’, so I just sort of tried it once, a couple of times, and it worked, and after that I realised that it was easy. And I think I got to that po
int – there was one phase in my life – where I didn’t even need to hardly stick my fingers down my throat, it was literally completely natural after a meal. And I was skinny, but to me I wasn’t skinny enough.
Unfortunately, although the boarding school did try their best – they do keep their eye on you and try to make you eat – there were just too many kids with eating disorders there. So although they did threaten to take me to the doctor it never happened, because in boarding school another aspect is that you’re lost, you’re just a number. Also, when you have an eating disorder you find ways of hiding it and I was very good at hiding it. I’d go and visit a friend at weekends and holidays instead of going home, so I didn’t see my family much, and when I did see them I used to wear baggy clothes and stuff like that. I think maybe my mum did suspect once but I was brought up in a family where things were put under a rug, nothing was talked about. So nobody ever really sat down and helped me out or confronted me with it; people suspected it but no one talked about it. So from the age of eleven it was like no one actually cared: my home life was gone and I didn’t have anyone at boarding school.
I remember once when I was about twelve at school, I tried to . . . I can’t remember what happened but I ended up in hospital. I think it was the bulimia and everything else and they’d threatened to suspend me – to send me back to my dad – so I said I had a headache and I took too many tablets, as I thought that was my way out. I’m not sure what kind of pills they were but they weren’t something that would kill me so it was definitely a cry for help. I can’t remember too much of it: I remember being sat in the back of a car and the school nurse slapping me around the face to keep me awake, and then when I got to the hospital I remember rushing around, having a tube down my throat, having my stomach pumped, being sick. And it was absolutely awful, I’d never do that again, it put me off for life. Anyway, so my mum had to pick me up from the hospital and I was so embarrassed because I knew she was going to have a go at me and be so ashamed and angry with me. But she just said: ‘Don’t you dare mention it to your father’, and that was it, it was never mentioned. And looking back I think that was probably a big cry for help but she never . . . you know . . . I would have hoped that she would have talked about it and said: ‘What’s wrong?’ But no one ever said that.
So I just started to run riot: I started running away, I never went to lessons, I used to get the timetable and then write my own timetable out where I’d wake up, go jogging, play tennis, have some lunch, play tennis again, maybe go to an art lesson if I wanted to, then have dinner. I was just doing my day like that. The thing was that when I was at home I had very, very strict rules and a very, very strict father, so when I got to boarding school I thought: ‘Oh my God, I can do what I want!’ I couldn’t believe, for instance, that I could wear hair bands that weren’t blue. I couldn’t believe that their ponytails weren’t perfect, that their shoes weren’t perfectly shiny, because we were all brought up in what felt to me like such a strict regime. So I thought: ‘I don’t have to polish my shoes every morning, my hair can be scruffy for days.’ I just realised I could do what the hell I wanted, so I pushed it to the extreme and to the extreme.
And I remember the school doing everything to try to keep me in place but I just went completely wild and there was nothing they could say or do, because nothing scared me because I didn’t have this scary man anymore. I’ve learnt since that when someone is brought up and they’re really, really scared then that’s the level that they have, so that’s the only way they can be disciplined in the future as the bar is so high. So when I got told off at boarding school and they had to go within the . . . what was politically correct or whatever . . . it didn’t scare me, nothing bothered me. I wasn’t interested because it was just normal discipline and that didn’t mean anything to me. It was: ‘That doesn’t hurt, that’s nothing.’ To me it was nothing because it wasn’t like this really scary man who was making me want to end my life.
The only way the school could really threaten me was to say they were going to suspend me, which meant that I’d have to go home to my father. And when I did get suspended and was sent home, it seemed like he didn’t even want to look at me; I felt like he hated me. So that was the only punishment that would work – suspending me – and I begged them not to every time. Why did I carry on acting out? That’s a good question, I really don’t know why, maybe I couldn’t think straight or maybe I had some kind of sick relationship with my father where, after a while, I needed to keep the same patterns going. I don’t know.
Anyway, eventually it was too late – the school couldn’t handle me – and after suspending me six times I was finally expelled when I was fourteen. My dad was disgusted with me, it felt like he just shouted and shouted, calling me all sorts of names, saying that I was useless and a waste of space. I got used to growing up just hearing the same words really. It felt like my mum was having to keep the peace and choose between having me or my dad in the house, so then I started saying I was studying in the library but really I was going to the park, where I ended up just hanging around with the wrong crowd and getting into worse and worse trouble really, taking drugs. Oh God, I tried everything – apart from trips and things like that – but ecstasy and cocaine and all that. But it didn’t work out for me at all. Because I was so skinny – anorexic tiny, probably five-and-a-half, six stone – and then I was drinking on top of that and doing drugs, I collapsed loads of times and then I got epilepsy, which was really bad.
Then my parents chucked me out. Because my dad – who was respected in the community and had a seat on the council, they probably thought I would bring real shame on him and the family and whatever. So they basically told me to go away, they got rid of me. So I spent a lot of time in hostels after that. It was really scary because obviously I was privately educated, I was at one of the top boarding schools and I spent my weekends watching polo and stuff, and the next thing I knew I was in a hostel with a load of heroin addicts. And I’d brought it on myself but it was hard to survive . . . I had to use all my senses to survive in that environment and it was horrible. It was the lowest point of my life ever.
I just wanted to escape all of this, because my life at this time was so awful. So I changed my name: I went to the local lawyer’s office and I changed my name by deed poll. I just wanted to get away from Sarah Howes, who was me, who had a bad life and was a complete loser. I just wanted to be someone else, I wanted to change my destiny. There wasn’t any particular reason I changed my name to Alicia Douvall, I just liked the name Alicia and then I saw a bottle of champagne and I spelt the name wrong. And I don’t think my parents cared as I don’t think they wanted to know me. So I changed my name, then I got a job in the local hairdressers, and I left the hostel and moved into a flat with a boyfriend. And then I realised at that point that I was going to change my life around completely.
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I’d been thinking about plastic surgery for a while, after I’d found this book where there was this woman who, I think, was sixty years old and she’d had loads of surgery and she looked amazing. There were before and after pictures and they were like chalk and cheese: they were this frumpy woman who turned into this beautiful woman. And I thought: ‘This is my answer to everything: the answer to happiness, to a successful life, to get loved.’ So I started planning how I was going to get all this plastic surgery. I just wanted to be like Barbie. I suppose, looking back, it was that association in childhood of her being successful and beautiful and happy. I just wanted to be like her. So I lied about my age and I had my first surgery at 17, which was a boob job. I went to a surgeon who told me: ‘Yep, that’s great, you can have it done’, and how wonderful it was all going to be. So I started on that journey.
After my first boob job I got interested in glamour modelling. I was uneducated and unqualified – I had not one GCSE to my name – so it was the perfect kind of career for someone in my position. Also, it went totally against what my parents brought me up to be: conserva
tive, clothes very covered up. You know, we never went on any European holidays so we never saw people sunbathing in their bikinis and things like that, so it was the opposite to how I’d been brought up. I went to a local photographer and he just cut me a break and did me some pictures for free and helped me send them off and then I got a top model agent and work started coming in.
I started doing Page 3 for the newspapers and I became the facts girl for Playboy TV. I used to get £1,000, or £2,000, and I got picked up in the car, had my hair and make-up done, and it was a huge thing. And I got down to the last three for the Big Breakfast, I was against Kelly Brook and she got it. I was dark haired when I auditioned but then I dyed my hair blonde. But I don’t think it was just about my hair colour, I think it was about me not having confidence in myself – I didn’t think that they’d ever want someone like me. I never had the upbringing of feeling I was capable of doing something like that. Glamour modelling was much more reachable.
I think to start with I had clear plans for what surgeries and procedures I was going to have: I was going to do everything to my face and then go down my body and do everything else. But being body dysmorphic – although I didn’t realise it was called this at the time – I was almost blind so I had to rely on the surgeon telling me what I needed. And I knew that: I knew I was blind, I knew I couldn’t see what was in the mirror. And after each operation or procedure I’d feel happy and then . . . sort of . . . I think the anxiety would come back. For instance, after the first boob job I was happy for about a year afterwards, but then I wanted my nose done and then I wanted my boobs done again. You’d have all these grand hopes and then it was never right. One minute you think it might be but then reality sets in and you think: ‘No, it’s not quite right.’ Because plastic surgery has its limitations, it’s never going to be perfect. So you have mixed emotions and you either plan to revise it or go on to the next thing.