French bill seeks to make inciting thinness illegal

THE French parliament’s lower house adopted a ground-breaking bill yesterday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and websites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes yesterday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Fashion industry experts said, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards.

The bill was the latest measure proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts to address the repercussions of using ultra-thin models.

Conservative lawmaker Valery Boyer, author of the law, argued encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court.

Doctors and psychologists treating patients with anorexia nervosa — a disorder characterised by an abnormal fear of becoming overweight — welcomed the government’s efforts to fight self-inflicted starvation, but warned its link with media images remains hazy.

French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. Spain in 2007 banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

Ms Boyer said the legislation could, in theory, be used against many facets of the fashion industry.

It would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 (€29,000) if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree, she said.

Ms Boyer said she was focusing on women’s health, though the bill applies to models of both sexes. The French Health Ministry says most of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.

Didier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture, said: “Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,” he said. “That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”

Marleen S Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media’s effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove the media causes eating disorders. She said studies show fewer eating disorders in “cultures that value full-bodied women.” Yet with the new French legal initiative, she fears, “you’re putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it’s much more complex than that.”