Thin may be about to be out by law

PARIS – In image-conscious France, it may soon be a crime to glamorize the ultra-thin. A new French bill cracks down on Web sites that advise anorexics on how to starve – and could be used to hit fashion industry heavyweights, too.\nThe groundbreaking bill, adopted Tuesday by Parliament’s lower house, recommends fines of up to $71,000 and three-year prison sentences for offenders who encourage “extreme thinness.” It goes to the Senate soon.\nCritics said the bill is too vague about whom it targets and doesn’t even clearly define “extreme thinness.”\nIf passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere, fashion industry experts said. It is the latest measure proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston prompted efforts throughout the fashion industry to address the health repercussions of ultra-thin models.\nDoctors and psychologists treating patients with anorexia nervosa – a disorder characterized by an extreme fear of becoming overweight – welcomed the French effort, but said anorexia’s link with media images remains hazy.\nFor the bill’s backers, the message behind the measure is important enough.\nThe bill’s author, conservative French lawmaker Valery Boyer, said she wanted to encourage discussion about women’s health. Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said Web sites encouraging young girls to starve should not be protected by freedom of expression.\nSo-called “pro-ana” – for pro-anorexia – sites and blogs have flourished in the United States and beyond, often hosted by adolescents sharing stories of how they deprive their bodies of nourishment.\nFrench lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. \nBill author Boyer said such measures did not go far enough.\nHer bill has focused attention on pro-anorexia Web sites that give advice on how to eat an apple a day – and nothing else.\nThe sites claim to provide emotional support for people who want to become anorexic. Photos of waif-like celebrities are given as “Thinspirations” on one blog, along with a list of advice on “how to skip meals.” \nBoyer said in a telephone interview that her proposed legislation would enable a judge to sanction those responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose “thinness altered her health.”\n“That is the objective of this text,” she said, without specifying who in particular might be prosecuted.\n“The socio-cultural and media environment seems to favor the emergence of troubled nutritional behavior, and that is why I think it necessary to act,” she said. Boyer insisted she wasn’t out to punish models or anorexics themselves.\nThe bill would make it illegal to “provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or directly compromise health.”\nIt calls for prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to $47,000 for offenders, with punishment increasing to three years in prison and a $71,000 fine in cases where a victim dies of an eating disorder.\nSocialist lawmaker Catherine Coutelle said the bill was introduced to lawmakers too quickly – less than two weeks ago, on April 3 – to allow for thorough discussion before Tuesday’s vote.\nWhile the health dangers of anorexia are obvious, opponents said it should be up to parents and doctors – not the government – to deal with the reasons for eating disorders.\nDidier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture, rejected legislating body weight.\n“Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,” he said. “That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”\nMost of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women, the Health Ministry says, as are most of the millions of people around the world who suffer from eating disorders.\nMarleen S. Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media’s effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove the media causes eating disorders.\nWilliams said studies show fewer eating disorders in “cultures that value full-bodied women.”