French Lawmakers Target

PARIS -- French lawmakers have passed a bill that makes incitement of "excessive thinness" a crime.

Does this mean prison pinstripes could be the next big trend in a French fashion industry known for celebrating waif-thin models?

Unlikely.

Lawmakers who passed the bill in France's lower house of Parliament Tuesday are touting the toughness of the proposed law. If passed in the Senate as well, it would allow judges to punish offenders with a fine of as much as €45,000, or more than $70,000, and three years of imprisonment.

In a speech before the vote, French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot called on lawmakers to uphold "the prestige of French fashion" by passing the measure.

The fashion industry is hardly quivering in its stilettos, however.

The bill mainly targets Internet sites that explicitly encourage anorexia, offering tips on food deprivation. The bill also doesn't explain how it will determine who is responsible for pushing anorexia.

Since the high-profile death of a Brazilian model two years ago, the fashion industry has been under pressure to tackle anorexia. The National Chamber of Italian Fashion in Milan now requires models to obtain notes from physicians attesting they are healthy. Spain has also taken measures to crack down on ultrathin models on the catwalk.

Yet much of the fashion industry's discourse on the issue can be characterized as finger-pointing. Modeling agencies, fashion brands and magazines have refused to take the lead in cleaning up the catwalks. Many of the same waif-thin models continue to stalk the runways.

Top designers also question whether a link between fashion and eating disorders exists.

"Fashion has never been thought of as inciting anorexia," said Didier Grumbach, president of France's Fashion Federation, which organizes Paris fashion week.

Mr. Grumbach said he supports a law that targets Web sites that promote anorexia. However, he added, "If the law is to regulate fashion, to make everyone fit the same standard of beauty, then we're against it."

Critics of the bill cast it as the latest attempt by the French state to micromanage the affairs of its citizens at the expense of time-honored French customs.

French smokers' hackles have been raised over a smoking ban that took effect in cafés and restaurants this year, barring indoor smoke in a land that coined the word "nicotine."

Being thin, though not excessively so, is also part of being French.

"A law is for when people don't respect self-discipline," said Hervé Brossard, president of France's Association des Agences Conseils en Communication, an communications-industry group, and vice chairman of advertising agency DDB Worldwide, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc.

In recent months, Messrs. Brossard and Grumbach took part in drafting a charter requiring members to ban emaciated-looking models from advertisements. The charter was signed by Ms. Bachelot.

By passing the law Tuesday, however, lawmakers signaled that tougher measures were in order in France, where between 30,000 and 40,000 people suffer from anorexia.

The law does allow for some instances of food deprivation.

Advocates of political hunger strikes, religious fasts and health-related dieting don't risk falling into the cross-hairs of the proposed law, said Valérie Boyer, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right Union for a Popular Movement party, who introduced the bill in Parliament.

Instead, the proposed law aims to crack down on "social pressure, notably exerted by the media," she said, adding that the bill targets anyone who "promotes abusive food behavior that can turn pathological."

Write to Christina Passariello at christina.passariello@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com

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