Wed, 21 Mar 2012 8:27a.m.
By Diaa Hadid and Daniella Cheslow
Told she was too fat to be a model, Danielle Segal shed a quarter of her weight and was hospitalised twice for malnutrition. Now that a new Israeli law prohibits the employment of underweight models, the 19-year-old must gain some of it back if she wants to work again.
Not that she was ever overweight. At 1.7m, she weighed 53kg to begin with. Feeling pressure to become ever thinner, she dropped another 13kg. The unnaturally skeletal girl weighed 40kg by then, or about as much as a robust pre-teen, and her health suffered.
The legislation passed this week aims to put a stop to the extremes, and by extension ease the pressure on youngsters to emulate the skin-and-bones models, often resulting in dangerous eating disorders.
The new law poses a groundbreaking challenge to a fashion industry widely castigated for promoting anorexia and bulimia. Its sponsors say it could become an example for other countries grappling with the spread of the life-threatening disorders.
It's especially important in Israel, which, like other countries, is obsessed by models, whose every utterance and dalliance is fodder for large pictures and racy stories in the nation's newspapers. Supermodel Bar Refaeli is considered a national hero by many. She is not unnaturally thin.
The new law requires models to produce a medical report no older than three months at every shoot for the Israeli market, stating that they are not malnourished by World Health Organisation standards.
The UN agency relies on the body mass index, calculated by factors of weight and height. WHO says a body mass index below 18.5 indicates malnutrition. According to that standard, a woman 1.72 metres tall (5-feet-8) should weigh no less than 119 pounds (54 kilograms).
Also, any advertisement published for the Israeli market must have a clearly written notice disclosing if its models were made to look thinner by digital manipulation. The law does not apply to foreign publications sold in Israel.
Read the original post:
Israel law eyes super-thin models as bad examples
