France may ban anorexia promotion in media

Promoting exceptional thinness might get you a jail term in France.

By Our Media Editor
25 February, 2008:

In a move that would have significant effects on the fashion arena, France’s lower house of parliament – the National Assembly – has adopted a Bill making it illegal for anyone to publicly induce excessive thinness or anorexia.

In the opinion of experts in the fashion industry, the law – which would apply to magazines, advertisers and websites – would be the strongest of its kind anywhere, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has reported.

The National Assembly approved the Bill after the anti-anorexia legislation won unanimous support from the ruling, conservative UMP party. The Bill will go to the Senate, the upper house of parliament, in a few weeks.

Guardian quoted Valerie Boyer, from the ruling UMP party, who proposed the new legislation, as saying that it would give judges the power to imprison offenders and fine them up to 30,000 euros (£24,125) if convicted of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree.

French lawmakers and fashion industry members, according to newspaper reports, had signed a “non-binding charter” a week ago on promoting “healthier body images.”

According to Frances’ Ministry of Health, a large majority of the 30,000-40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.

Spain had, in 2007, banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

The anti-anorexia Bill adopted by France’s National Assembly is the latest in a series of measures to be proposed after the anorexia-related death of a Brazilian model in 2006 gave a fillip to efforts at tackling eating disorders within the fashion industry.

According to Valerie Boyer, of France’s ruling UMP party, “the Bill reflects concerns about pro-anorexic websites, said to encourage extreme weight loss. The legislation’s impact would be wide-ranging.”

The Bill has met with opposition from many in France’s fashion world. Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, was quoted by the Guardian as saying: “Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”

Marleen S Williams, professor of psychology at Brigham Young University in Utah, the United States, who does research on the media’s effect on anorexic women, told Los Angeles Times in an interview: “It is almost impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders. Studies showed fewer eating disorders in cultures that value full-bodied women.”

But the new French law, if ratified by the Senate, would amount to “putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it’s much more complex than that,” she added.

Michelle Fitoussi, a columnist for the Elle magazine in France, reacted thus,“Maybe a law, as a cautionary warning, can help with change if blogs about anorexia incite young women to be dangerously skinny and if models look too scary on the runway. We have to be vigilant about that.”

However, Michelle added that she had a “hard time imagining French authorities busting into dressing rooms before Paris fashion shows and handcuffing stylists and designers as they tuck scrawny models into their clothes. We have to be aware in all parts of society, not just in fashion, to stop girls from being on a very hard diet. Anorexia is a very real and complicated disease. Even the experts don’t completely understand it.”

Jean-Paul Gaultier, French designer, was quoted in the newspaper French newspaper Liberation questioning how the law would tackle the complex issues behind extreme dieting and thinness. “You don’t solve that kind of problem with laws but with understanding,” he said.