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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:03AM (#168238)

    Actually there's a difference between indecency and incest: Incest has a high chance to produce genetically defective offspring. So unlike with indecency, there are actual ethical issues involved.

  • (Score: 2) by Jiro on Thursday April 09 2015, @10:04AM

    by Jiro (3176) on Thursday April 09 2015, @10:04AM (#168263)

    Incest doesn't have a greater chance of producing defective offspring than sex between people who are X number of years old. (I don't remember the exact value for X, but I believe it was less than 40.) Yet we don't ban such sex. Also, this reasoning wouldn't apply to homosexual incest.

  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:48PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:48PM (#168356)

    Really? What about gay incest, or other situations where the couple really can't have children? What about incestuous relationships where the people involved don't want to have children? In fact, without the incestuous relationship, the babies wouldn't even exist. They are not hurting the baby, as the baby wouldn't exist otherwise, and therefore it doesn't know any other way of life besides being genetically defective in some way.

    Maybe someone doesn't like incest, but they can choose not to engage in it. Banning it is anti-freedom and people who support bans should just move to North Korea.