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me. ‘My name is Marianne Diers and I’m a talent scout for Copenhagen Models and Elite. Would you like to be a model?’
    It was a simple enough question, but first let me tell you a little bit about me and my body. We’d never got on very well together. I hated the way I looked and I would do everything I could not to be seen. The opinion seemed to beshared by most of the kids I knew. I studied hard at school because I was sure I would only be able to rely on what was inside me to get me through life. The taunts of giraffen really stung, but I also believed them: it was as if it was my fault that I was such a tall thing. By the age of 11, I was taller than my own teacher and in an attempt to disguise it, I would deliberately stoop slightly so as not to be noticed.
    It was around this time that my parents noticed my spine had gone crooked with what was diagnosed as scoliosis. The doctors pointed out then that one leg was shorter than the other. This condition is painful and if it’s not treated properly in children then it can cause problems into adult life. I wore a medical corset for more than a year, but that was okay because I could wear it under my regular clothes.
    But the doctors also said I had to wear special orthopaedic shoes to compensate for the difference in the length of my legs and at that point I rebelled. I wore those hateful shoes for two days and never put them on again. Already I had the corset, braces and I was stooped over with my height – I felt like some kind of freak. I had to go to physiotherapy every Friday until at last the doctors decided they weren’t getting the results they needed: they wanted to remove a piece of my knee, warning that the procedure carried a 50 per cent chance of leaving me with a permanently stiff leg. Thank God my dad told them the operation was completely out of the question: we would carry on working on the condition but my parents wouldn’t run the risk of me being permanently damaged.
    There was also trouble in my mouth: I wore braces and the dentist had to take out six of my teeth. You could parkbicycles in the gaps, it was a nightmare! Now I couldn’t even smile as I dragged my extra-long leg around and tried to avoid banging my head on the ceiling. It was not a good scene and all of this was going on at the same time, so I felt really unlucky.
    I compensated by working very hard and got myself a job in the local library in an effort to feel there was something I could do to make up for the way I looked. I had the best grades and I got two 13s – you could only get that if you were as good as your teacher. I was so happy with that. When my German teacher asked for a volunteer to learn all the irregular verbs, I put up my hand and said I’d do it over the weekend. There were more than 200 of them and the teacher thought it would be impossible. I said I’d do it if he bought ice cream for everyone on Monday. I did nothing else but study that weekend and when we got back, I had them all down perfectly. Everyone cheered me for the first time: ‘Gitte got us ice cream!’ And I felt so happy and proud – it was one of the best days I ever had at school.
    Mostly I would feel a terrible knot in my stomach that tightened whenever it was break time. I was always alone in the playground and the other kids were often having a laugh at my expense. As I write about my schooldays now I get that same sick feeling of dread just remembering how horrible it was: it was the worst kind of pain. Even my medical conditions weren’t as bad as knowing that I was an outcast. Girls passed around invitations to birthday parties and they always made a point of handing them to everyone around me, which made it perfectly obvious that I was excluded. It was even worse in the mornings after parties: they made sure I wasin earshot when they talked about how much fun it had been, what games they played and how many presents they got. I regularly cried in the evenings before I went to bed