French lawmakers target pro-anorexia websites

Penalties would be set for touting eating disorders

PARIS - In the capital of high fashion and ultrathin models, conservative French legislators adopted a pioneering law yesterday aimed at stifling a proliferation of websites that promote eating disorders with "thinspiration" and starvation tips.

The bill, approved by France's lower house of Parliament, still faces a vote in the Senate. But if passed, it would take aim at any means of mass communication - magazines, blogs, websites - that promote eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia with punishments of up to three years in prison and 45,000 euros, or $71,000 fines.

The new law was sponsored by Valerie Boyer, a conservative lawmaker from the Bouches-du-Rhone region in the south of France, but was also supported by the government's health minister, Roselyne Bachelot.

"We have noticed," Boyer said in an interview with the Associated Press, "that the sociocultural and media environment seems to favor the emergence of troubled nutritional behavior, and that is why I think it necessary to act."

With such a law, the French legislators are seeking to tame a murky world of some 400 sites extolling "ana" and "mia," fond nicknames for anorexia and bulimia. Since 2000, the websites have multiplied in different languages with blunt tips on crash dieting, binging, vomiting, and hiding weight loss from concerned parents.

In Spain, support groups have emerged to counter the influence of pro-ana websites, and government authorities prodded Microsoft to close down four such groups on its social networking site, Live Spaces. Health specialists in Britain have also attacked the growth of sites that refer to anorexia as "my friend ana."

The wording of the bill would make it illegal to "provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or endangering health."

Critics from the French Socialist Party complained that the new law was vaguely worded and rushed through the lower house by the UMP, the conservative party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Eating disorder specialists also expressed doubts about whether such a law would actually help victims or create even more demand for the sites by creating new publicity about their existence.

"Ultimately, I think it's a mistake to ban them because I think that you're going to be hard pressed to demonstrate in a very clear way that these sites have a direct negative affect," said Michael Levine, a psychology professor at Kenyon College in the United States whose specialty is eating disorders and the effects of mass media.

There is some emerging evidence that websites promoting anorexia do have a negative impact, according to research by Anna Bardone-Cone, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri whose work was published in The International Journal of Eating Disorders. Bardone-Cone created a typical pro-ana website and randomly assigned 235 female college students to view it or a fashion website featuring conventional models.

Her research showed that the young women who looked at the anorexia site later felt lowered self-esteem.

Bardone-Cone, though, said she had mixed feelings about the French approach to use legislation to tackle the issue. She advocates the blocking of such sites from schools and public libraries, but said education is the best approach to reach the typical young women drawn to the sites.

As written, the proposed French law does not make it clear who would be ultimately responsible for the contents of such sites - a blogger or the Internet Service Providers hosting the site.

The proposed law is one of the strongest measures proposed since the 2006 death of a Brazilian model from anorexia, which prompted soul searching in the fashion industry.

Last week, French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter to promote healthier body images in a nation where the Health Ministry estimates that more than 30,000 people suffer from anorexia.

But the proposed legislation drew criticism from the French Federation of Couture. Didier Grumbach, president of the organization, told the Associated Press that it was impossible to legislate body weight.

"Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny," he said. "That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France."