A French model whose skeletal frame shocked the world when she posed nude on billboards for an anorexia awareness campaign in Italy has died.
PHOTOS: Isabelle's campaign
Isabelle Caro, 28, died in a Tokyo hospital on November 17, where she had spent two weeks being treated for pneumonia, Paris Match magazine reported today.
Caro made worldwide headlines in 2007 when she posed naked for anti-anorexia billboards positioned throughout Milan during fashion week.
At 1.64m tall, Caro reportedly weighed 31kg when she was shot by celebrity photographer Olivero Toscani for the campaign sponsored by Italian fashion brand No-l-ita.
Caro said she wore no makeup for the shoot to highlight how the disease had ravaged her body.
The ad, which shows Caro with patches of psoriasis on her skin and her toes blue from lack of blood circulation, was banned by the Italian advertising watchdog.
Caro said she agreed to be photographed naked to show people the dangers of anorexia.
She told German magazine Stern the ad made her feel like "an ambassador for anorexia".
The model, who lived in Marseilles south of Paris, had suffered anorexia since she was 12 and was hospitalised several times for malnutrition as a child.
Caro fell into a coma in 2006 when she weighed only 25kg.
Speaking to US singer Jessica Simpson on The Price of Beauty , Caro said she began modelling as a teenager and was told she had to lose weight by a casting director.
In 2008 she released an autobiography called The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to Get Fat.
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