PARIS - French lawmakers have adopted a groundbreaking bill that would make it illegal for anyone -- including fashion magazines, advertisers and websites -- to promote extreme thinness.
Under the proposed law, judges would have the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 if found guilty of inciting others to deprive themselves of food to an "excessive'' degree.
The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.
The bill is the latest and strongest of measures proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts throughout the international fashion industry to address the repercussions of using ultra-thin models.
French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. Spain in 2007 banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.
But Conservative Valery Boyer says such measures did not go far enough.
Her bill has mainly brought focus to pro-anorexic websites that give advice on how to eat an apple a day -- and nothing else.
But Boyer insisted in her speech to lawmakers Tuesday that the legislation was much broader and could, in theory, be used against many facets of the fashion industry.
Judges could also sanction those responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose "excessive thinness ... altered her health,'' she said.
Boyer said she was focusing on women's health, though the bill applies to models of both sexes. The French Health Ministry says most of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.
Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said he was not aware how broad the proposed legislation was, and made no secret of his strong disapproval of such a sweeping measure.
"Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,'' he said. "That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.''
Marleen S. Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media's effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders.
Williams said studies show fewer eating disorders in "cultures that value full-bodied women.'' Yet with the new French legal initiative, she fears, "you're putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it's much more complex than that.''
