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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: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 10 2015, @12:44AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 10 2015, @12:44AM (#168563) Journal

    I don't think that employers should force them to be unhealthy, but I'm not sure what the solution would be if that is what sells.

    I wasn't discussing the appropriateness of the law, I was looking into the problem "is there anything than a state need to do in regards with imposing unhealthy practices on employees?"? (one extreme is nanny-state - takes care about everything in regards with the citizen's protection. The other extreme is the absolute laissez-faire state: no intervention in the transactions between private parties. As both of the extreme are noxious, there has to be something in between. Maybe on a case by case basis, in which case we'd absolutely need to deal with the specific of the French half-assed law which punishes the sick persons)

    Or... can one hope the market will sort it out?

    The market will do whatever makes money, so good luck with that.

    So the absolute laizzes-faire state extreme is not acceptable.

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