Promoting excessive skinniness will become a criminal offence in France under a law voted by parliament today to combat so-called “pro-anorexia” and “thinspiration” sites on the internet.
A maximum year’s imprisonment and a fine of €10,000 were set as punishment for “provoking people to excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged dietary restrictions that could expose them to a danger of death or directly impair their health.”
MPs voted the measure as an amendment to a broad public health act tabled by the Socialist government.
Last month parliament dropped a second anti-anorexia proposal which would have made it a criminal offence for modelling agencies to employ unhealthily thin women. That idea, which would have been based on a minimum body mass index (BMI) for models, was abandoned