Wider Context: skinny model debate

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
Size-zero debate: fashion industry is told to 'grow up'
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 22 May 2007

The chairwoman of an independent inquiry into the fashion industry's relationship with size-zero models warned yesterday that it was time for the industry to grow up.
Baroness Kingsmill, a former deputy chairman of the Competition Commission, said stronger measures may have to be taken to protect young women aspiring to be top models.
She was speaking at the launch of the inquiry by a panel including a psychiatrist, an academic and leaders of the fashion world into the casting and selection process for models and the impact on their health of the demand for the super-skinny look.
But critics said it was hard to see how a minimum size could be imposed without incurring charges of discrimination.
The three-month inquiry, backed by the British Fashion Council, comes in response to growing disquiet about the risks of modelling to young women desperate to meet the industry's waif-like norm. The deaths of a Uruguayan model, Luisel Ramos, 22, and her sister, Eliana, 18, within months of each other last year fuelled the debate. Luisel died of heart failure after starving herself for days before a fashion show and Eliana died of a heart attack. In November, the death of Ana Carolina Reston, a Brazilian model aged 21 who lived on a diet of apples and tomatoes, sparked worldwide concern.
Leading actresses have condemned the pressures on young women. Kate Winslet said: "I feel very strongly that curves are natural, womanly and real." The demands on women to pursue size-zero figures was "unbelievably disturbing, " she said. Billie Piper, the former Doctor Who star, described the trend as disgusting.
Their views have been echoed by ministers. Rosie Winterton, the Health minister, said the impact on girls aspiring to be super-skinny was "deeply worrying," and the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, called for extremely thin women to be kept off the catwalk.
Last September, Madrid Fashion Week announced that it was banning models with a body mass index of less than 18, the lowest weight considered healthy, equivalent to 8 stone 4 lbs for a woman of 5ft 6ins.

London also refused to follow suit, with the British Fashion Council, which runs London Fashion Week, instead urging designers to use only healthy-looking models aged over 16.
Lady Kingsmill said the issue could no longer be ignored.
"It is time, in a way, for the fashion industry to grow up," she said. "It is a real and a very important industry and the people working within it have to be taken seriously and have to be treated well."
She added: "We are going to explore what the legal obligations are both domestically and internationally. There are lawyers who have said they could put up quite an interesting personal injury case on behalf of a model whose health has been damaged by her working environment or on behalf of a model who has been denied work because of her model size."

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2567983.ece