"I'm not buying anything else there, they make me feel like a fatso," said the indignant shopper, no hulk at 53 kilograms and 1.7 metres tall. Though she felt uncomfortable, she says that friends of hers who are slightly plump are virtual outcasts in Argentinian malls and shop at "outsized" stores.

Argentina is already reckoned to have a higher incidence of the "slimming diseases" - anorexia and bulimia which affect an estimated 7 million women and 1 million men worldwide - than any other country except Japan. Experts estimate that one in 10 teenage Argentine girls suffers from an eating disorder.

Now the doctors and parents of adolescents with anorexia and bulimia are accusing fashion stores of being stingy with the cloth and the truth by shrinking their sizes to force clients into ever-more petite clothing.

"The sizes are not just small but tiny, without the shape of women's hips or anything, just a scrap of cloth," said Mariana Fortini, a deceptively vivacious 18-year-old school student who is eight months into treatment for anorexia.

Extra-small

Argentines are proud of their good looks, which reflect a blend of Italian, Spanish, Eastern European, Middle East and Native American blood. Many of the 36 million inhabitants of Latin America's most affluent country simply take good care of their "bella figura."

But the narcissism can get obsessive.

It is the regional mecca for cosmetic surgery and anyone who is marginally corpulent can feel uncomfortable when summer arrives and the fashion for hipster pants showing off the bellybutton draws attention to that vulnerable midriff.

Women who would be elegantly slim in Europe or the United States feel like obese outcasts in chic shopping malls where a life-long Medium size who has not gained a pound suddenly finds herself directed to Large by twiggy shop assistants.

It can be upsetting for anyone. But an adolescent, with a complex encouraged by advertisers enamoured of undernourished models, can be pushed over the edge. One in 10 anorexia victims are male, but they have no problem buying clothes that fit.

Victims describe a nightmare of fasting, bingeing and vomiting, laxatives and enemas, quack-slimming pills, patches and potions and obsessive exercise, in the quest for that "00" or Extra Extra Small, the Holy Grail of slimmers.

"I would get desperate to fit into those sizes and imagine what my body could look like. So I'd get obsessed with dieting to look like the models who wear those clothes," said Fortini.

"There's a lot of incentive to get into smaller and smaller sizes. It's a society where women compete to get into smaller sizes," she said.

Natalia Carloni, a dark-eyed science student of 22 who has been treated for anorexia and bulimia for two years, said: "My aim in life was to get into the smallest size. Now I realize that it's really sick. Society makes you sick."

Ashamed of their bodies, anorexics hide in their rooms to starve themselves, frequently progressing to bulimia where they may binge and vomit as many as 20 times a day. Their lives become chaotic and filthy and their hormones run amok. They may stop menstruating, lose all sexual desire and avoid all social contact. Some burn or slash their emaciated arms.

(Agencies via Xinhua)