Rights violation: Israhell Bans Ultra-Thin Models

A new Israeli law prohibits fashion media and advertising from using Photoshop or models who fall below the World Health Organization's standard for malnutrition.

Rights violation: Israhell Bans Ultra-Thin Models Models20may820p

Aya Barazani, who suffers from anorexia, points at Israeli fashion models Noga Dekel, left, and Shira Amikam, as fashion photographer Adi Barkan looks on during a photo shoot in his studio for a campaign promoting anorexia awareness.

On Monday, March 19, the Israeli parliament passed legislation ubiquitously known in the country as the Photoshop laws. The new regulations on the fashion and advertising industry ban underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index and regulate Photoshop usage in media and advertising. Abroad, the laws have opened new discussion on a government's right to intervene in these two industries.

The legislation focuses on two elements of the fashion industry that have long drawn criticism for their effects on women and, especially, girls: ultra thin models and the use of Photoshop to make women appear impossibly thin in advertisements. The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry's responsibility -- and its possible harm -- to its customers' psychological wellbeing. It has also raised the question of whether other countries might consider similar measures to address what many activists consider a root cause of an epidemic of anorexia and other eating disorders.

Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine, as well as prominent photographer and fashion model agent Adi Barkan, championed the law.

Barkan has been working to help girls with eating disorders since he discovered the epidemic firsthand in 1997, when a 15-year-old girl named Caty asked to meet with him to understand what a "model should look like." She arrived at the meeting five-foot seven-inches, weighing 79 pounds. "It was obvious she required hospitalization," Barkan told me over email. Caty was hospitalized for 5 months, during which time Barkan says he visited daily.

A few months after Caty was released, Barkan appeared as a guest on an Israeli lifestyle TV show to discuss his work. "During the interview the hostess told me she had a surprise for me," he recalled, "a girl who claims I saved her life, and then Caty came in and told her story."

"What this [legislation] can achieve is that this vulnerable individual is protected from environmental things...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/what-the-us-can-and-cant-learn-from-israels-ban-on-ultra-thin-models/256891/

Rights violation: Israhell Bans Ultra-Thin Models

Rights violation: Israhell Bans Ultra-Thin Models

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