French Thin Law

You Can Be Too Thin, In France

In fashion-forward France, promoting anorexia and extreme thinness may soon land you in prison.

The Parliament’s lower house recently passed a bill that would bar Web sites, magazines and advertisers from promoting ultra thinness. The measure calls for prison sentences of up to three years and fines of $71,000. The bill specifically targets what the bill’s author, Valery Boyer, calls pro-anorexia propaganda Web site, also referred to at “pro-ana” sites.

“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” Boyer told the Associated Press.

The measure doesn’t reach the French senate until May. But if approved, it would be unprecedented. Spain in 2007 banned ultra thin models from appearing on runways. Madrid fashion week organizers, using ratios provided by the World Health Organization, banned models who weighed less than 125 pounds.

But no country has proposed criminalizing extreme thinness.

Initial reaction to the measure from the fashion industry, as one might expect, was not favorable. Didier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture, told AP: “Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”