Lawmakers in France are so concerned about the estimated 35,000 French women suffering from anorexia that the lower house of Parliament passed a controversial bill yesterday making it illegal to promote "extreme thinness" through magazines, websites and advertisements.
The bill - which carries penalties ranging from fines of $47,000 to a three-year prison sentence if an afflicted person dies from anorexia - still needs to be approved by the Senate in order to go into effect.
Naturally, the prominent figures in French couture denounced the bill. "Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny," claimed Didier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture," adding, "That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France."
Sacre bleu, Didier! It looks as if a judge may very well be deciding who is too skinny in France. And even if the bill is too vague, as opponents suggest, or too simplistic, as other critics allege, it can't possibly hurt to make editors, designers, and advertisers think twice before sending more images of starved models out into the world.
