Who says the eurozone doesn’t project a united front? Even as misguided analysts on the sell side throw out reckless language like “redenomination risk” and irresponsibly suggest that the EMU is in fact nothing more than a “collection of fixed exchange rates [9],” evidence abounds that the core and the periphery are most assuredly on the same page. If you need proof, just look at the convergence in EMU member policy as it relates to the weight of runway models. Here’s more from CBC [10]:
The link between high fashion, body image and eating disorders on French catwalks may lead to a ban on super-skinny models.
France's government is likely to back a bill being discussed in Paris banning excessively thin fashion models as well as potentially fining the modelling agency or fashion house that hires them and sending their agents to jail, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said on Monday.
Style-conscious France, with its fashion and luxury industries worth tens of billions of dollars, would join Italy, Spain and Israel, which all adopted laws against too-thin models on catwalks or in advertising campaigns in early 2013.?..
And while this seemingly flies in the face of the currency bloc’s wholehearted embrace of austerity, officials are fairly certain this is an important step in the global fight against unhealthy couture advertisements:
Under the proposed legislation, any model who wants to work has to have a body mass index (a type of height to weight ratio) of at least 18 and would be subject to regular weight checks. Health Minister Marisol Touraine says the ban would protect young women who see models as the ideal female form.
It’s important that eurozone governments focus on these types of issues and we now understand not only why Greek FinMin Yanis Varoufakis felt the need to show [11] his fellow Greeks how much they could be eating at lunch if he weren’t stealing their pensions, but also why it’s critical to ensure that the fine for being skinny is high enough to deter people who were thinking about being thin from actually doing so:
Health Minister Marisol Touraine says the ban would protect young women who see models as the ideal female form. Plus, many models in France are still in their teens.
So, a woman who is 5-foot-7 would have to weigh at least 121 pounds. The normal weight BMI range is around 18.5 to 25.
The law would enforce fines of up to $79,000 US for any breaches, with up to six months in jail for any staff involved, French Socialist Party legislator Olivier Veran, who wrote the amendments, told newspaper Le Parisien.
Finally, the proposed legislation will also put an end to the egregious and rampant practice of encouraging skinniness:
The bill’s amendments also propose penalties for anything made public that could be seen as encouraging extreme thinness.
And although “the union representing fashion agencies” in France apparently opposes the new law, we suspect it could easily pass in certain other areas of the world where there is no food [12].
