Starvation sites doctor modeling photos

Internet sites and blogs which peddle the gospel of an “anorexic lifestyle” to teenage girls were outlawed by the French parliament last week. The law is the first attempt anywhere in the world to stamp out the “pro-ana” movement, a cult-like attempt to promote anorexia as a lifestyle which began in the United States eight years ago.

If, as expected, the legislation is also approved by the Senate, it will become a criminal offence in France “to encourage another person to seek excessive thinness which could expose them to a risk of death or endanger their health.” Offenders risk two years in prison or a 30,000 euro fine.

Although the law would also apply to magazines, it is mostly aimed at Internet sites which have sprung up in France — and around the world — in the past two years. There are currently more than 8,000 public pro-ana — also called thinspo or thinspiration - videos on YouTube, most of which set images of skeletal models, celebrities and anonymous real girls to songs such as Lisa Loeb’s, “She’s Falling Apart,” a favourite anthem among disordered eaters. These sites worship extremely thin female celebrities, including Nicole Richie and Victoria Beckham.

 

French Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, told parliament: “Giving young girls advice about how to lie to their doctors, telling them what kinds of food are easiest to vomit, encouraging them to torture themselves whenever they take any kind of food is not part of liberty of expression.

 

“The messages sent out here are messages of death.” “Everyone else lies to you because they love you but I’m going to tell you a secret: in the depths of their heart, they are disappointed with what has happened to you,” the French blog, Be Perfect, Be Pro Ana, says. “Their talented girl has become fat and lazy.”

Contacted by the Asian Pacific Post, Public Health Agency of Canada spokesperson Jacinthe Perras said Ottawa cannot comment on another government’s decisions. “However, the Public Health Agency of Canada promotes healthy lifestyles,” said Perras, adding anorexia was included in a comprehensive 2006 report, Mental Health and Illness in Canada.
“We are hoping to increase awareness of the importance of this issue through this publication,” said Perras.  

The law’s author, deputy Valerie Boyer, says as many as 40,000 people in France have anorexia. Most are females aged between 12 and 13 or 18 and 19. Anorexia, she says, kills more people in France each year than any other mental disorder. French advertisers, model agencies and fashion houses have also agreed to sign a charter and to “refuse to publish images which could promote an ideal of extreme thinness.”

Be Perfect, Be Pro Ana suggests: “You’re nothing but a fat, bloody cow! If you eat, all discipline will be lost. Is that what you want? To return to the fat cow that you are? I will force you to read fashion magazines and look at those perfect bodies which mock you . . . .”
For more Canadian information on this issue, visit www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/miic-mmac/chap_6_e.html.