Now that Madrid has installed a ban on skinny models during fashion week, saying that none of the women on the catwalk must be a size 0, the Czech fashion icon Petra Nemcova speaks about what it means to be just that, a fashion icon.

The 27-year-old is, for some time now, in a very serious relationship with the 'You're Beautiful' singer James Blunt, but they keep out of the public spotlight for most of the time. While the supermodel refused to talk about her private life, she did reveal that she had some big issues with keeping in shape and up to speed with the high demands of the designers she was working for.

Petra said in a recent interview that, besides enduring the most horrible and absurd diets, she also took fistfuls of laxative pills to keep her body the size they were asking for. 'I went through so many diets in my life. I've been very, very skinny. I've been a size 0 but I'm naturally more curvy. I ate just vegetables, carrots, tomatoes. I went from a just-protein diet to just eating apples, to eating no carbs. I took laxatives. I went through all of it just to be able to model', Nemcova's startling confession goes.

Unfortunately, not even her open statement of endangering her health to fit the standard supermodel helped convince the organizers of the London fashion week to go back on their decision of allowing size 0 models on the catwalk.