Nanny Bans Thin Models

Nanny, as we all know, hates fat people. In her view they are lazy, unhealthy and ignorant; a veritable blight upon the landscape.

Thus Nanny has bombarded us with propaganda about healthy eating, exercise and weight loss. Scarcely a day goes by when we do not see another "helpful" piece of advice from Nanny about weight loss, or another "reality" show exposing some poor sap to ridicule and contempt because they are overweight.

However, imagine my surprise when I read that Nanny is also up in arms about thin people. Seemingly, and how surprising is this given the "anti fat" propaganda, there are some people who are so worried about being fat that they slim down to unhealthy levels of skinniness and make themselves ill in the process.

Now, this being Nanny Britain, Nanny has determined that the cause for this obsession with weight loss is of course not her own propaganda machine; but the evils of the fashion industry which likes to use thin models.

As such Nanny has mounted a campaign against thin models, using the recent London Fashion Week as a pretext to launch her campaign.

Nanny's "experts" say that legislation (how surprising!) is now needed, to protect the health of the models and of the teenage girls and young women who are influenced by them.

Nanny wants to ban models below a certain size from the catwalks.

Such a ban would be based on the, now suspect and reviled, Body Mass Index (BMI) whereby models under a BMI of 18 would be banned.

The average catwalk model has a BMI of only 16.

Steve Bloomfield, spokesman for the Eating Disorders Association, said:

"We do think legislation is needed.

This is about protecting the young women and men who work in the fashion industry,

as well as those who are at risk of an eating disorder

and can be influenced by the pictures that they see.

The fashion industry is there to make money

and there is no legislation to protect models.

It basically exploits people who are under-weight

and forces others to follow suit."

I do agree that our obsession with slimness is unhealthy, the main cause of that is Nanny herself. I also agree, that to my male eyes, the catwalk models look gaunt souless creatures.

However, applying a meaningless defunct medical benchmark (BMI) will not solve the problem.

The issue that Nanny, and the parents of models, ought to address is this; namely, that the fashion industry has within its ranks wealthy male financiers and agents who "enjoy" the company of 14 year old girls.

Once a model has "grown up", her only recourse to stay within the industry is to try to look as near to 14 as possible; excess dieting and snorting coke are ways to keep the body looking trim, if you are in the industry.

Until the fashion industry stops hiring 14 year old girls, and certain types of parents stop pushing their underage children into modelling, this problem will not be wished away by applying a BMI benchmark.