French pro-anorexia sites soon to be history
Written on April 18, 2008 – 3:19 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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The French National Assembly adopted a bill last week that would make anorexia promoting publications illegal. Anyone who “incites” extreme thinness on websites, magazines, and in advertisements risks a punishment of up to three years in jail and 30,000 euros fines. The main purpose of the new measure seems to outlaw the French pro-anorexia web sites.
On pages like these, girls advice other girls how to get super - and dangerously - thin. Pictures of ultra-skinny stars like Kate Moss, Nicole Richie, the Olsen Twins, and Keira Knightley dominate the sites’ design. “There has been an explosion of these sites over the past year. They offer morbid advice to young girls on how to lie to their parents. It’s mental manipulation,” said right-wing deputy and author of the bill Valery Boyer to Agence France Press (AFP).
This revolutionary law has stirred quite a heavy debate in France. Socialists and the intelligentsia blame the right-wing parties for overseeing the problems. “In France, we know how to punish, we know how to treat, but we don’t seem to know much about prevention,” said psychiatrist Sophie Criquillion-Doublet to AFP. Next week, the law goes to the Senate, that will judge whether the law will be finally approved or not.
I think the law won’t hurt anyone, and might make the sites less accessible for young French girls. The fanatic pro-anorexia girls will find the international sites, forums and groups though. History has shown that effectively preventing certain content from the web is nearly impossible since it always finds its way to the audience. Therefore the law should just be seen as a statement and not so much as the end of the French pro-anorexia movement.
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4 Responses to “French pro-anorexia sites soon to be history”
By BRAY on Apr 18, 2008 | Reply
This is really interesting news for someone like me living in Turkey. Here we aren’t exposed to all the dieting ‘hype’ that is common in British and American newspapers.
If you’ve ever met anyone who suffers from an eating disorder you will know just what a frustrating and punishing illness it can be. It’s not just that the individual is constantly under-performing through lack of nourishment, it also places a huge drain on other family members, as well as professional care-givers.
Clinicians and medical researchers have known since the 1960s that the trend toward thinness in fashion is dangerous.
Speaking at The (British) Association For Family Therapy Congress at Your University in 1982, Dr. Chris Dare from London’s Institute of Psychiatry drew attention to the trend and provided statistics about treatment.
Dare spent much of his professional life combating anorexia nervosa and together with Professor Ivan Eisler is largely responsible for creating The Maudsley Method, and Internationally acclaimed family-based treatment for the disease.
I first was recruited to treat someone suffering with anorexia when I was 18 years of age. My job was to get her to eat liquefied food. The woman concerned was 28 and looked about 50 years of age. Conversation with her was impossible. She had lost her teeth due to shrinkage of the gums.
I lost contact with her for many years, and then learned that she had died as a result of complications arising from her illness at the age of 36.
The French sometimes make eccentric laws, this one however is incredibly sensible. I hope other nations will follow the French example.
Stephen BRAY
http://thefamilybusinessschool.com
By Eelco on Apr 18, 2008 | Reply
Uhg, the legal system is for laws, not for ’statements’.
By BRAY on Apr 19, 2008 | Reply
Eelco,
A sovereign nation may use its laws for whatever purposes its constitutional processes and doctrine allows, regardless of your, or my wishes.
The French do seem to make ’statements’ through legislation don’t they?
I am not sure that the ‘Anorexia Law’ is a good example though? A better one would be the laws that make it illegal to consider the forced migration of Armenians from their homeland in Ottoman Turkey into Syria during World War 1 as anything less than an act of genocide in France. In today’s post-Ottoman Turkey it is illegal to consider it AS an act of genocide.
Historians in both countries, argue understandably, that history is a matter for academics rather than politicians!
But are historians in the same category of professionals as doctors? The ‘Anorexia Law’, it seems to me, is far more like those laws which restrict smoking, than ones that limit historical, or political statement?
BRAY