Elizabeth Ann Jones (born 5 September 1958) is a British journalist. She began her career as a fashion journalist, but her work has broadened into confessional writing. Jones divides opinion. While she has gained positive responses, a "beautifully natural writer, as well as a funny one" according to Deborah Ross in The Independent, some of her articles have been fiercely criticised. A former editor of Marie Claire, she has been on the staff of The Sunday Times and the Evening Standard. Jones writes columns for the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. Early life Jones is the youngest child of an Army father and a former ballerina. By her own account in The Mail on Sunday and Mail website, she grew up in the village of Rettendon, near Chelmsford in Essex, and had six siblings, She attended Brentwood County High School for Girls. Jones says she has been vegetarian since the age of twelve. According to Jones, "I was six when I first realised how hideous I looked", and she has been an anorexic since the age of about 11. By the age of 17 she wished to look like model Janice Dickinson. Discovering Vogue magazine in Southend Public Library in August 1977, was a revelation for her. It "wasn’t just a magazine to me, its cover was a mirror: how I wanted to look, dress and be". Jones studied journalism at the London College of Printing. Early career After leaving college, she began to work for Company in 1981, initially as a sub-editor, eventually becoming a staff writer before leaving to go freelance in 1986. In 1989, she began an 11-year stint at The Sunday Times Magazine, becoming deputy editor of their "Style" magazine in 1998. In April 1999, Jones was appointed editor of the UK edition of Marie Claire. An announcement by Jones during June 2000 that the leading fashion magazines were setting up a self-regulatory body concerning the size of models was "contradicted" by the editors of rival magazines. Faced by a declining circulation, she was sacked from this post two years later for refusing to use bulimic models and (according to Jones) listing in the magazine the freebies she had been offered in the previous month. She has continued to write about the fashion industry. In July 2013, Decca Aitkenhead wrote that "no one deconstructs its futile, psychologically destructive false promises more forensically than Jones