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France makes big waves in the modelling industry with new health law
In a move that places it in line with many other European countries, France has instituted a law that bans underweight fashion models.
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S. Bryn Austin, director of the Harvard Chan School’s Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) and Director of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression working group is leading the call to prohibit thin fashion models from participating in fashion shows or photo shoots if they are too thin.
The legislation will require all models applying for jobs in the country to provide a medical certificate by a professional that proves their health and Body Mass Index (BMI) are appropriate based on their weight, age and body shape.
Models collapsing from malnutrition-induced heart attacks just seconds after they step off the runway.
Fashion models should be benched if they are dangerously thin, and US regulators should make sure this happens.
And with the sway that NY and Paris hold in the fashion world, Austin and Record say they think this would push designers to comply and for a healthier image of models to take hold.
The regulations, the editorial argues, would protect fashion models from “workplace hazards” in the same way workers in other industries with high levels of certain diseases and disorders – for example, coal miners who developed lung cancer at increased rates – have been protected in the past.
WA doctors have welcomed new French laws requiring very skinny models to have medical proof of good health but say Australia should wait and see whether they work before considering anything similar. By that standard, a 5-foot-9-inch model would need to weigh at least 122 pounds.
Employees who breach the law, hiring models without a certificate and illegally publishing photoshopped images, will face up to six months in prison and fines of up to $115 000.
For those who have any doubt that this can be deadly, consider the case of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston.
In 2007, France launched a controversial campaign against excessive thinness with billboards featuring Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model who suffered from an eating disorder since in her teens.
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Regulating the fashion industry in the United States won’t be easy, Record says. But with the new rules in France, U.S. support could make a difference.