Fergie Lashes Out At Weight Critics Of Princess Beatrice

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson has lashed out at the media, claiming they are giving her daughter, Princess Beatrice, a weight complex.

Fergie told the BBC her daughter, Beatrice, 19, is a healthy size 10 (an 8 in U.S. measurements) in a new interview. She made the comments after her daughter’s weight was referenced in the tabloids, which caught the princess on vacation in the Caribbean wearing a bikini.

“The press has been absolutely outrageous, calling her such horrible names,” Fergie told the BBC. ” I just think they ought to take more responsibility.”

Fergie, who is a spokesperson for WeightWatchers, spent years struggling with her own issues with weight, like the late Princess of Wales, Diana Spencer. Ferguson, who is now promoting a UK television special where she helps a low-income family become healthier, previously told Larry King in 2000, she had turned to food to cope with problems.

“In my particular case… I used food as my escapism. It could have been drugs, or alcohol or anything else, but that was my escape route and my form of addiction,” she said on “Larry King Live.” “And it really is so punishing, because it’s so mood altering and it really changes your everyday — and I think food is so easy to get hold of.”

In the recent interview by the BBC, Fergie, who has two daughters by Prince Andrew, whom she divorced in 1996, said Beatrice was very upset over the attention on her frame.

“Her comment was ‘Will they be happy if I get anorexia because then they would write about that?’” Fergie said.

Fergie insisted her daughter is a healthy weight.

“The thing is she is a regular size 10. She’s very fit and well and healthy,” she said. “I understand freedom of the press but what I don’t understand is when it takes a regular, very healthy girl and tries to completely obliterate her confidence.”