There Should be a Minimum Weight Limit For Professional Models

It is said by doctors that an adult woman is at risk of a large number of health problems if her BMI (body mass index) falls below the recommended 18. These include osteoporosis and loss of the menstrual cycle. If a young model is extremely skinny she needs medical help and should not be allowed to work until she is back to a healthy weight.

Many models are under pressure from agents and designers to be thin. As a result, many develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. In the recent past, several models have died as a consequence of eating disorders and a need to be thin. Others turn to drugs in order to fight their body’s natural craving for food. Having minimum physical standards would ensure that young girls could not be put under pressure to adopt extreme diets. Such an objective standard would be much better than asking for doctors certificates or having age restrictions, both of which could be got round by dishonest agents.

Many girls idolise models and feel the need to mirror their thinness. Models of a very low weight are setting bad examples to these girls and can be held responsible for the increasing number of girls with eating disorders. The fact that some websites celebrate anorexia and hold up skeletal models as examples to follow shows how influential fashion can be. The fashion industry must take responsibility for its actions and avoid promoting extreme thinness as a desirable norm.

Fashion is promoting an unhealthy image for women to aspire to. Studies have found that most women feel that they are overweight, even if they are healthily normal for their height. This leads them to feel guilty and depressed, to start fad diets and buy unnecessary slimming products. We should be promoting bigger, healthier sizes so that fashion will reflect real women and not the unhealthily thin minority.

Very thin models need to be protected by the state from themselves. Many models are too young to be considered fully adult in any case, and so restricting their freedom to prevent them harming themselves is easy to justify. And even very thin adult models may not be able to freely decide about their own bodies and health. Anorexia nervosa is a mental illness and sufferers are not in a condition to make rational decisions to protect their own health. Combine this with the low education of many models, and the pressures on them from agents and the fashion industry, and it is time the state stepped in to protect them.

The fashion industry leads opinion and so making a change to the kind of models used will have a big impact. Only a few thousand people will ever attend catwalk shows or buy the incredibly expensive clothes they showcase. However, these include many leading celebrities whose lives are covered in every detail by tabloid magazines read by many millions. And the clothes themselves hugely influence high-street fashions, which in turn often only look good on unhealthily thin girls. Forcing the fashion industry to make changes will therefore ripple through society in a way no other action can do.

Voluntary codes will never be effective. Designers will always claim that favourite models should be exempt from the agreed codes. The system will end up being policed by the very people who are responsible for the problems today – agents, designers and photographers. To be credible, action must have the force of law.

Using female models that are size zero suggests that the only way to be beautiful is to be size zero. Size zero fashion icons have a dangerous influence upon follwers of fashion and can lead to physical and mental complaints. According to the National Institue of Mental Health, an estimated 0.5% to 3.7% of women will suffer from anorexia in their lifetime; 1.1% to 4.2% for bulimia and 2% to 5% for binge eating disorder. The majority of the population is not size zero and therefore using size zero models is discriminatory. However, if the media was to stop using images of size zero models, then cases of eating disorders would decrease.