Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the beginning of fashion week in New York, London and throughout Europe, I want to make some comments on zero-size models. Over the last couple of months, we have seen growing calls around the world to curb the use of zero-size models on catwalks, especially after the deaths last year of two South American models from anorexia nervosa. Indeed, on Saturday the Victorian Minister for Health, Bronwyn Pike, issued her own call for ultrathin models to be dropped from this year’s Melbourne fashion festival. Ms Pike said the fashion industry had a responsibility not to promote extreme thinness because it does not send a good message of healthy eating and healthy lifestyle. She was correct in saying that the type of dieting involved in creating that body shape was bad for a person’s health, especially in the long term.

Minister Pike was also right when she said that being underweight was just as bad as being overweight. Obsession with weight can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Up to 20 per cent of people with anorexia will die. Anorexia is the third most common illness in adolescent girls and, for women aged between 15 and 24, eating disorders are among the top four leading causes of disease burden in terms of years of life lost through death and disability. Any other disease with that high a rate of morbidity would be a national cause of concern, but eating disorders get literally no attention.

Dr Vivienne Lewis, a researcher and practising clinical psychologist from the University of Canberra, during a body image and eating disorder seminar that I conducted at Parliament House last year, said that body image concerns are increasing and that negative body image affects more women than men. She said thinness was an unrealistic ideal that 99 per cent of women cannot achieve without significantly affecting their health and wellbeing. For the majority of Australian women and, to a lesser extent, men, their body image is negative. Poor body image has been found to be related to feelings of depression and can lead to eating disorders.

A recent survey conducted by the Nielsen company has revealed what 25,000 people in 45 countries said about the body size of women strutting the world’s catwalks and red carpets. An overwhelming 81 per cent of online consumers agreed that female fashion models and celebrities are too thin. Nielsen found that Latin American consumers were strongly against superskinny models, with 91 per cent of Argentineans and 89 per cent of Brazilians supporting the notion that fashion models are too thin. The online survey also found a link between perceptions of thinness among women and a country’s quality of life. Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland were the fiercest critics of the fashion industry with as many as 94 per cent of those polled believing models were too thin. These countries also consistently top global rankings for having the best quality of life.

Australia and New Zealand also boast top models Elle Macpherson and Rachel Hunter, who are famous for their healthy physiques. ‘These countries believe in the healthy concepts of beauty and culturally also rejected the superskinny model type that follows fashion trends,’ said Mr Dodd from ACNielsen. So the majority of people out there do not want to see superthin models on our catwalks, but the fashion industry continues to run them down the catwalks. Why? They do not look natural. The clothes do not look natural on them. But somehow that is the ideal. Tragically, that ideal then gets into the heads of young, vulnerable girls in particular, and this can lead to an eating disorder, which can rob them of not only their childhood and their adolescence but indeed their life.

Eating disorders are commonly accompanied by other psychological disorders, such as depression, self-harm, suicidal behaviour, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders. Among children there is now a minicrisis, with children as young as eight being treated for eating disorders, and there is an increasing incidence of self-harm. This has got to be scary—we are talking about self-harm among eight-year-olds. According to a study by a researcher from Flinders University, almost half of girls aged between five and eight wish they were skinnier. Girls in kinder are experiencing body image problems. Basically, young girls in Australia are growing up hating the way they look. Why is that? There is no doubt that media has played a significant role in this trend, but it is not alone—nor is the catwalk and fashion industry—in this. Daily, Australians are bombarded with images of thin women, and thin is portrayed as beautiful, hip and cool. Dangerously thin celebrities are portrayed as fashion icons. We need national leadership to curb this trend or I believe there will be dangerous consequences.

The Howard government must do more to curb the body image crisis and the alarming increase in eating disorders within Australia. We need more funding for the treatment of eating disorders and the education of sufferers, their families and the general community. We need a national forum on body image, drawing together the media, the fashion and advertising industries, medical professionals and school and community groups to discuss ways to curb the body image crisis. In an answer to a question on notice in September last year, the Minister for Health and Ageing said the government was not considering developing a national code of conduct on body image. Given the health crisis we are facing, this is a ‘head in the sand’ attitude.

The Victorian government has called for a media code of conduct on body image to be developed, and I believe a forum would be an ideal opportunity to develop this. We also need to consider a body mass index for fashion models so that ultrathin models are no longer used in fashion shows and photo shoots. Madrid Fashion Week, one of Spain’s most prestigious fashion shows, is banning models who do not fall within a healthy body mass index. United Nations health experts recommend a BMI of between 18.5 and about 25, and some models can fall well below the minimum. The Spanish Association of Fashion Designers has also decided to ban models who fall below a BMI of 18.

In Milan, the fashion capital of Italy, a new catwalk code of conduct has been established to protect young models vulnerable to eating disorders and exploitation. The Academy for Eating Disorders in the United States has also called for a national code for catwalks. The academy is an organisation for eating disorder treatment, research and education of professionals. It has called for ‘a global ban on the use of severely underweight models in fashion shows and in fashion magazines’ and is encouraging the industry to adopt a minimum acceptable height-to-weight ratio. They have also requested that models under the age of 16 are not used. The academy says:

One such environmental factor is an emphasis on body shape and weight. Research indicates that the gap between the beauty ideal presented by the fashion industry and reality can have a negative effect on self-esteem. Many young women and men turn to dieting in an effort to live up to this beauty ideal. For those who are vulnerable, the combination of dieting and low self-esteem may lead to the development of an eating disorder.

Although the fashion industry does not directly cause eating disorders, it does contribute greatly to our culture’s perception of beauty. The AED has collaborated with professional and patient/carer organizations from around the world to draft an international bill of rights, the Worldwide Charter for Action on Eating Disorders, for people with eating disorders and their families. The fashion industry, modeling agencies, and fashion magazine should collectively adopt the Worldwide Charter for Action on Eating Disorders and set terms for establishing a healthy industry.

In the United States the fashion industry has come out and said, ‘No, we won’t support those, but we will give nutritional guidelines to models so that they know about healthy eating.’ I do not think that is sufficient. The Academy for Eating Disorders says that a guideline for the fashion industry should include:

Discouragement of all non-healthy weight control behaviours throughout the industry (e.g., self-induced vomiting, use of laxatives, diuretics and diet pills). Increased educational initiatives aimed at student models and professional models, their agents and employers to reduce the multiple health risks of various unhealthy weight control behaviors.

It is interesting to read about the food that is provided at these fashion industry events. There are trays and trays of pastries and glasses of champagne but no fruit or water, only lots of highly concentrated caffeine drinks. That is the normal diet for a whole day when these models are walking up and down. These are superthin women and we are encouraging this ideal It is just ridiculous because it is not what the body image of a female should be. The federal government needs to show some leadership and establish a code of conduct or BMI rule here as has been done in other countries.

There is evidence that young women actively search the web for information on how to lose weight and on eating disorders. I did not realise there were things called ‘pro-ana’ websites until I went looking for them. If you look at them you will be horrified. Many websites promoting eating disorders and anorexia are set up by adolescents who have eating disorders themselves. They use the sites to discuss and reinforce their activities. Many of them say that this a lifestyle choice and that they are in control. I have never come across another disease that has a ‘pro’ site where people celebrate having a disease that can lead to death. These sites feature images of ‘thinspirational’ models and celebrities for the purpose of maintaining and promoting eating disorders. Many photos are taken from catwalks.

Some of these sites are hosted in Australia. One site that I have previously mentioned in the parliament, hosted on ninemsn, has been removed, and I congratulate them on that. I wrote to the Attorney-General recently, asking that he reclassify these sites so that they could be banned or filtered out. He wrote back, saying:

Ultimately, it remains the responsibility of parents or guardians to make decisions about appropriate entertainment material for their children and to provide adequate supervision.

I think that is a fairly poor response. Most parents do not even know what their children are seeing on websites. I think these sites need to be reclassified and banned so that this dangerous information can be taken off the web. We need to do more. We need to set standards. We need to be out there as consumers saying that this is not the presentation of women that we need in our lives. We need genuine women walking down the catwalks. (Time expired)