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posted by on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the freedom-fat dept.

CBC Canada has a report on a law under consideration in France's lower house that would require models to meet a minimum body mass index standard.

The link between high fashion, body image and eating disorders on French catwalks may lead to a ban on super-skinny models.

Style-conscious France, with its fashion and luxury industries worth tens of billions of dollars, would join Italy, Spain and Israel, which all adopted laws against too-thin models on catwalks or in advertising campaigns in early 2013.​

Under the proposed legislation, any model who wants to work has to have a body mass index (a type of height to weight ratio) of at least 18 and would be subject to regular weight checks.

The law would enforce fines of up to $79,000 [US] for any breaches, with up to six months in jail for any staff involved, French Socialist Party legislator Olivier Veran, who wrote the amendments, told newspaper Le Parisien.

The bill's amendments also propose penalties for anything made public that could be seen as encouraging extreme thinness, notably pro-anorexia websites that glorify unhealthy lifestyles and forums that encourage eating disorders.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is is a measure of relative size based on the mass and height of an individual.

c0lo's random thoughts:

  • On one side: governments regulating the BMI... (large soda ban)... hmm?
  • On the other side: how is this different from laws against public indecency, laws which are well-knitted into the fabric of westernized societies?
 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:05AM (#168106)

    On the other side: how is this different from laws against public indecency, laws which are well-knitted into the fabric of westernized societies?

    What is and is not "indecent" is completely subjective. It all amounts to what offends people, and if it offends people enough it will get banned, as if freedom is less important than protecting their feelings. These laws are intolerable and should be scrapped.

    Anyway, this would be just more censorship from France; nothing new. After those attacks lots of people pretended to rally around freedom of speech, only for people who said things they didn't like to get punished by the government.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:19AM

    by VortexCortex (4067) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:19AM (#168112)

    Je Suis Charlie?
    Mais Non,
    Je Suis Charles Frederick Worth. [wikipedia.org]

    Ah, the French: Standing for free speech, when it's Politically Correct to do so.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday April 09 2015, @08:16AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday April 09 2015, @08:16AM (#168228) Homepage
      Are you confusing the people for their government?

      What country are you from such that that kind of confusion would even be possible? Not any country I know.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves