The new law bans online glorification or enabling of anorexia, but failed to include language banning especially thin runway models. File Photo by Andrea Hanks/UPI |
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PARIS, April 3 (UPI) -- It is now a crime in France to celebrate or encourage anorexia or unhealthy degrees of "thinness" on the Internet. The new law, an amendment to a larger health-related bill, was passed by French Parliament on Thursday.
Under the new law, those found guilty of "provoking people to excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged dietary restrictions that could expose them to a danger of death or directly impair their health" could be sentenced to up to a year in prison and face a fine of more than $10,000.
The law's proponents heralded the provision against pro-anorexia or "pro-ana" websites as a long-awaited reform, and insisted that its enforcement would not quash free speech.
Some legislators in Paris attempted to attach a more aggressive amendment that would have criminalized the employment of undernourished fashion models. The law would have banned models below a certain body mass index (BMI) from the catwalk, but the provision was nixed last week.
Dr. Olivier Veran, a Socialist MP and neurologist who originally offered the now-abandoned amendment, told reporters he was happy with the new law but upset that those who "promote malnutrition and commercially exploit people who are endangering their own health" will remain unpunished.
"The social impact of the image promoted by fashion, in which women must be skinny to a pathological degree to be beautiful and go on the catwalk is very strong," he said.
Legislators have floated the idea of cracking down on the fashion industry for promoting unhealthy body images, but relevant provisions and amendments rarely make headway in parliament.
France's National Union of Modeling Agencies issued a statement earlier this year in response to Veran's scrapped amendment, saying: "French modeling agencies are in permanent competition with their European counterparts. As a result, a European approach is needed."
That European approach is increasingly under fire, however.
"There really is pressure on them," Ines Dauxerre, the mother of former supermodel Victoire Dauxerre who struggled with anorexia, told TV station Europe 1. "They are congratulated for losing weight. They are measured for their thigh circumference, but the fashion world won't ever admit to it."
