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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: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:54AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:54AM (#168132) Journal

    Don't you think it might be a subconscious urge?

    Expose people to certain norms all the time, and their behavior and sense of self-worth will be affected.

    The pro-anorexia and bulimia communities just use the Web to take it a step further and codify a niche.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:36AM (#168147)

    Don't you think it might be a subconscious urge?

    Expose people to certain norms all the time, and their behavior and sense of self-worth will be affected.

    As a nerd I have had urges to be flat, white, with a cellulose texture, and have become a BDSM fetishist. I even have a craigslist ad out to let people write notes on me and tell me I'm boring.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:45AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:45AM (#168151) Journal

      Kinky.

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:50AM (#168179)

        Just like my headphone chord baby.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:20AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:20AM (#168165) Journal

    Perhaps that's the core of the problem. Exposure is equals to norm in the subconscious of many people. And there's a subconscious drive for many to comply with the norm regardless of its merits or sanity.