Is It Time To Set Weight Minimums For The Fashion Industry?

The criticism of unhealthily thin models-and the effect their usage has on young women-has been levied at the fashion industry for some time.

France is so prominent in fashion circles that global models are referred to as “Paris thin”, S. Bryn Austin and Katherine Record of the Harvard Chan School’s Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) say. Even models growing a layer of downy fuzz as their bodies try to keep warm. Social authoritarians know it when they see it. The op-ed in the American Journal of Public Health calls for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to set regulations that would prohibit the hiring of models below a given body mass index, such as BMI 18.

“Especially girls and teens”, says Record, who is a deputy director with the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.

Models will actually need a doctor’s note proving their health is “compatible with the practise of the profession”, reports the BBC, and this decision will be based on weight, age, and body shape.

The regulations, the editorial argues, would protect fashion models from “workplace hazards” in the same way workers in other industries with high levels of certain diseases and disorders – for example, coal miners who developed lung cancer at increased rates – have been protected in the past. “Professional fashion models are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders resulting from occupational demands to maintain extreme thinness”.

“A BMI of 18 would mean a 5’10” model would have to weigh at least 125 pounds.

Fashion models in the US who are dangerously thin should be banned from participating in fashion shows or photo shoots, just as their counterparts in France are, public health experts say.

Models looking for work in France will now have to pass an examination that deems them healthy, following legislation that passed France’s National Assembly Thursday.

According to CBC news, employers who fail to provide the health documents can be punished for up to 6 months in jail and receive a £55,00 fine.

Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model whose emaciated image appeared in a shock Italian ad campaign, died in 2010.

“There is a greater health goal of reducing incidences of anorexia and other eating disorders by changing the image of women that is perpetuated so widely by the fashion industry”, Record tells TODAY. Reston had long dreamed of being a fashion model, but when her dream came true it took her life.