The French government is backing parliamentary plans to ban unhealthily thin models from catwalks. Under two proposed amendments to recent health reforms, anyone employing skinny, undernourished fashion models or “glorifying anorexia” could face fines of up to €75,000 (US$80,000; £54,000; A$104,000) and a six-month prison sentence.
These measures, if passed into law, would oblige models to provide medical certificates showing that their body mass index (BMI, which is a type of height-to-weight ratio) exceeds a required minimum. The acceptable minimum BMI has yet to be decided, but the World Health Organization considers people with a BMI below 18.5 to be underweight and at risk of being malnourished.
Setting the limit at this level could mean significant changes to the fashion and advertising landscape. Research suggests that the average fashion model has a BMI below this threshold. In a 1997 study published in The Lancet, for instance, researchers used biometric data (such as height, bust, waist and hip measurements) provided on model agency websites to estimate the mean BMI in a sample of 300 fashion models.
They found fashion models tended to be significantly underweight, with an average BMI of 17.6. To put this in perspective, the average BMI for French women is around 23.2, for British women is 27, and for American women is 28.7. Data from 2007-08 shows the average Australian woman’s BMI was 26.7. The healthy range for BMI is between 18.5 and 25.
