THE Rudd government plans to take on the fashion industry with a new code of conduct requiring magazines to feature normal-sized models and disclose the use of digitally enhanced photos.
Youth Minister Kate Ellis will tackle the fashion, media and advertising industries over their portrayal of stick-thin women which, she says, is contributing to a generation of children - some as young as six - suffering from eating disorders.
Gallery: Are these models too skinny?
She has nominated body image as the first item on the agenda of the new Office of Youth established last week.
"It's pretty clear that we have a problem if young people are literally starving themselves to be thin,'' she told
The Sunday Telegraph.
Ms Ellis said she wanted a national code of conduct to be finalised in the new year after the success of a Victorian program, which was introduced in April.
Chadwick models learn healthier approach.
She said advertisers and magazines would be encouraged to use fewer skinny models and, instead, feature real women with healthy body sizes.
"It's about representing people of all different sizes and all different looks and ensuring people know that it's OK not to (be skinny),'' she said.
"It also promotes the fair placement of diet, exercise and cosmetic surgery advertising to avoid overly glamorising the severely underweight celebrities.''
Lap-bands: Funds for teen weight loss surgery.
Under the code, magazines and advertisements would be forced to disclose whether a model's image had been digitally enhanced.
"We know so often that when we see images that people are aspiring to look like they have been altered and enhanced,'' she said.
"I don't know whether it's the Government's job to ban them (digitally enhanced images) but I do think we need to have a transparent system where people realise the models in those pictures don't look like that themselves and disclosing when there's been altered or enhanced images.''
Designer Collette Dinnigan backed the idea of a body image code but said it was difficult for designers to cater to all sizes on the catwalk.
Speaking from Paris Fashion Week yesterday before her 26th showing there, Dinnigan said.
"People need to understand when they start campaigning about such things is that we don't have the luxury of making our collection in five different sizes to cast on people''.
Dinnigan said she was careful when casting models.
"We absolutely do not endorse anybody that has eating disorders or who is too young,'' she said.
She cast two Australian models for her latest Paris collection launch - Skye Stracke and Alice Burdeau.
Burdeau, 19, who won Australia's Next Top Model last year, said she wasn't sure about magazines disclosing to their readers when they digitally alter images.
"Everything is Photoshopped. They even Photoshop politicians on their how-to-vote cards.
Everyone is so used to things being Photoshopped that if it wasn't Photoshopped they would be horrified.''
Vogue editor Kirstie Clements said beautiful, young people belonged on the escapist pages of a fashion magazine, not real women of different sizes.
"It's about beautiful young girls creating beautiful fantasies; it always has been, it always will be,'' Ms Clements said.
"It's been done before and it didn't work. One of the teen magazines were using girls who were size 14 or 16 _ I'm not sure that's the right thing to do when girls are 13 years old.''
However, Ms Ellis said Australians had responded well to advertising campaigns that featured real women rather than stick-thin models, such as the Dove campaign.
Ms Ellis said the Victorian code of conduct, while voluntary, had been successful in achieving a healthier portrayal of women's bodies in the media and in fashion.
"On a national level, the code of conduct would be complemented by an advertising campaign aimed at teenagers to promote positive body images, along with support services and programs to help young people suffering from eating disorders.
"The inclusion of body image in the school curriculum would teach students that a healthy weight, not a size six, is attractive, and teachers would play a role in helping to build students' self-esteem
It horrifies me to think of six-year-old children starving themselves to death.
"We have to look at how we can send messages within schools and also within the family to ensure we are addressing these issues.
"Teachers are a really important communicator of self-esteem and of putting out healthy images and of encouraging people that healthy is beautiful.''
http://nocleanf
