Micromanaging the Model
December 18, 2015 10:20 PM   Subscribe

France, which made being an "ultra-thin" model illegal this past April, just recently passed legislation making it illegal to hire such models.

The Guardian: "Models working in France will need a medical certificate proving they are healthy and not dangerously thin under a new law approved by French MPs. Failure to provide a certificate will be punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of €75,000 (around £54,500). The bill also forces magazines to flag up photographs that have been 'touched up' or Photoshopped. The tough new legislation is aimed at combating the growing problem of anorexia in models and rising numbers of young people with eating disorders."

Dazed: "Soon, models working in France will be required to show a medical certificate proving that their health is 'compatible with the practice of the profession'. Doctors will be able to decide whether or not a model is fit for work based on their weight, age, and body shape."
posted by ourt (12 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Modeling agencies that don’t require such certificates face fines of about $80,000 and possible imprisonment for up to six months.

How, exactly, does one imprison a Modeling Agency?
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:51 PM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


Glad to see this move.

I think they'll probably hang it on the staff responsible for making casting decisions. A good thing, imo, I think it might help to have individuals on the line.

Kirstie Clements, former editor of Australian Vogue, on seeing changes in casting standards:

It is too simplistic to blame misogynistic men, although in some cases I believe that criticism is deserved. There are a few male fashion designers I would like to personally strangle. But there are many female fashion editors who perpetuate the stereotype, women who often have a major eating disorder of their own. They get so caught up in the hype of how brilliant clothes look on a size 4, they cannot see the inherent danger in the message.


In 2004, a fashion season in which the girls were expected to be particularly bone-thin, I was having lunch in New York with a top agent who confidentially expressed her concern to me, as she did not want to be the one to expose the conspiracy. "It's getting very serious," she said. She lowered her tone and glanced around to see if anyone at the nearby tables could hear. "The top casting directors are demanding that they be thinner and thinner. I've got four girls in hospital. And a couple of the others have resorted to eating tissues. Apparently they swell up and fill your stomach."

I was horrified to hear what the industry was covering up and I felt complicit. We were all complicit. But in my experience it is practically impossible to get a photographer or a fashion editor – male or female – to acknowledge the repercussions of using very thin girls. They don't want to. For them, it's all about the drama of the photograph. They convince themselves that the girls are just genetically blessed, or have achieved it through energetic bouts of yoga and eating goji berries.

posted by cotton dress sock at 11:20 PM on December 18, 2015 [13 favorites]


So the agencies will send their talent to sympathetic doctors (it's so they can work! do you really want to deny someone their ability to make a living?) and nothing will change.
posted by bradbane at 11:35 PM on December 18, 2015 [5 favorites]


Maybe robots are the answer, like those robot jockeys in the UAE.
posted by notyou at 12:24 AM on December 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


What's nutty about the need for such laws is that they take ridiculously thin people and then photoshop them anyway. Even worse, you don't need to have a particularly practiced eye to tell that they're photoshopped, because it's a) usually pretty obvious and b) bodies have more unsightly bulges and hard angles than that.

Anybody who's spent as little as 10 hours taking photos can tell you that people look pretty different with professional make-up, lighting teams, bespoke garments and professional photographers with loads of optical equipment and knowhow...and then they give away the game with some obvious photo manipulation anyway.

Casual examination of catalogs over the last decade seems to show two trends in fashion photography: the increasingly bizarre and unrealistic (body type/image) on one hand, and general lowering of standards and/or photographic quality on the other (from outfits who have the cash and talent do do better, no less!). This has confused us from both a photographer's perspective and a consumer's perspective.

Baffling all around.
posted by Strudel at 12:26 AM on December 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


How, exactly, does one imprison a Modeling Agency?

It's a group of people. You put those people in prison. Same way you might say you were imprisoning a band if you threw the drummer, guitarist, bassist, singer, etc. in prison. Companies and organisations aren't people, but they're comprised entirely of them, through employment and/or ownership.
posted by Dysk at 4:07 AM on December 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


I don't follow fashion at all, but when I do encounter fashion photography it is often the thinness that I notice. At a less elite level, I am seeing more clothing catalogs/websites showing some variety of shapes and/or listing what size the model in the photograph is wearing, both of which are much more helpful when shopping than just seeing a bunch of identical people.

So the agencies will send their talent to sympathetic doctors (it's so they can work! do you really want to deny someone their ability to make a living?) and nothing will change.

At the very least doing so will roll liability to that doctor, which might give the smarter ones pause.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:15 AM on December 19, 2015


So the agencies will send their talent to sympathetic doctors (it's so they can work! do you really want to deny someone their ability to make a living?) and nothing will change.

At the very least doing so will roll liability to that doctor, which might give the smarter ones pause.


This already happened with regular sick leave (there were doctors who gave longer leaves than others; who had more relaxed standards for giving leave, etc.) and the administration cracked down on that.

Medical certificates are NOT something that doctors mess around with here since they are indeed then directly liable if a medical issue arises in relation to the activity they gave their OK for. As medicine is socialized here, there's no complex web of legalese or behind-the-scenes private mucking around that could tie it all up in courts. It's straightforward liability.

Just another thing that socialized medicine does a lot better than privatized.
posted by fraula at 4:33 AM on December 19, 2015 [14 favorites]


So the agencies will send their talent to sympathetic doctors (it's so they can work! do you really want to deny someone their ability to make a living?) and nothing will change.

Until investigators notice the stream of photographic evidence of malfeasance and check on which doctor signed off the models involved. Then people will probably go to jail.
posted by acb at 4:34 AM on December 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


I think it's interesting, and not surprising, that neither the psychiatrist nor the modelling agency union rep (Guardian piece) feel a legal/policy solution is at all useful, anorexia being predominantly a psychological problem, in their view.

(Also, NB, France has a national union for modelling agencies.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:13 AM on December 19, 2015


How, exactly, does one imprison a Modeling Agency?

Hopefully in a manner which can subsequently be employed to investment banks and telemarketing agencies.
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:07 PM on December 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


How, exactly, does one imprison a Modeling Agency?

That's a fair point. They would probably all just slip out between the bars.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:54 PM on December 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


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