French Health Ministry has reviewed the issue of skinny models on the French catwalks and suggested that such models need special attention, but they will not be banned from the podiums, as the French Health Ministry officials said on Friday.
After two Latin American models died in 2006 of anorexia, designers, model agencies and the entire fashion industry have been massively attacked by the publicity for promoting such a thin look. The critics say that these promotions lead to eating disorders in young women, who strive to become models.
Unlike France, other prominent countries in the world of fashion, like Italy, Brazil, India and Spain, have already taken respective measures to not admit underweighted girls on the catwalk. This was also caused by the media attention the two death last year drew to the fashion industry.
Instead of taking the way of a complete ban, the French have taken the way of promoting a campaign for awareness and, of course, information in the respective industries. The officials have also stated that the Ministry intends to make voluntary agreements for engaging young women into the field of media, advertising and fashion industry.
Not banning the underweighted models from catwalks is also caused by the fact that the fashion industry is very popular in France, and while thin and good-looking models appear on posters and in magazines, large quantities of export goods are guaranteed.
First statements of the French fashion industry's officials were made in January, when the head of the French Fashion Federation said that there would be not necessarily additional measures applied - a model's life is full of strict rules without any restrictions from the federation, he said.
Violette Baranda, the town councilor or Paris, said in an interview to the French newspaper Le Parisien that France should withstand this media and public pressure on the fashion industry, because when the girls weigh a bit more than needed, they are disposed of at once as though rotten goods. However, there are still some designers, who strive to make their models thinner and thinner.
The city council of Paris is absolutely FOR applying more pressure against model agencies and the fashion industry, yet the Health Ministry opposed the pressure, by saying that the thinness of the girls became a symbol of fashion and there was nothing to do about it.
The story of anorexic models and fashion industry in general came back on front pages of many newspapers around the world in the beginning of this week. It was caused by the news that the daughter of Donatella Versace, owner of most famous fashion organizations in Italy, suffers from the same eating disorder, the fashion world is trying to fight - anorexia.
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Note: According to Wikipedia, the web free encyclopedia anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes an eating disorder characterized by low body weight and body image distortion with an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Individuals with anorexia often control body weight by voluntary starvation, purging, vomiting, excessive exercise, or other weight control measures, such as diet pills or diuretic drugs. It primarily affects young adolescent girls in the Western world and has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric condition, with approximately 10% of people diagnosed with the condition eventually dying due to related factors. Anorexia nervosa is a complex condition, involving psychological, neurobiological, and sociological components.