And let's have everyone submit to urine, blood and hair testing to make sure they're not partaking of any substances or activities the state finds objectionable. And while we're at it let's regulate the amount of skin that clothing can display and make sure that all exposed skin gets slathered in sunblock.

Dear me we're creating an entire generation of people who are actively dissuaded from developing an internal compass or any judgement.

Discrimination based on height and weight? Sounds fair.

Will overweight models be next? The obesity rate in Spain has increased from 6.8 percent in 1985 to 13.1 percent in 2003. More than 35 percent of Spaniards are overweight - is this the message Spain wants to send to youth?

Should there be a lower and upper limit on models' weight?

Why not the fashion and entertainment industries? I would like to see emaciated models and actresses banned from fashion shows, magazines, television, and movies, unless they are portraying a character who is starving.

I'm opposed to anorexia and bulemia of course, and I know plenty of fashion models use drugs and laxatives and all sorts of things to stay thin, but I'm getting really sick of people equating skinny with unhealthy and feeling absolutely free to rag on skinny women and say things like "skeletons aren't sexy!" or "we're women, we have asses and bellies!" Well hey thanks, so called feminists, thanks for telling me my body isn't good enough and I'm not a real woman, I appreciate that!

I'm not as skinny as a fashion model but people, even people I don't know very well, have no qualms about telling me to gain weight or trying to force extra food on me. It's totally obnoxious and I wish it would stop, along with the putdowns of skinny women in general.

I don't know if it's fair to say New York is years behind Europe. In many European cities (especially in Paris/Milan), the models are routinely thinner than American models so perhaps they have more "correcting" to do.

I think there is definitely an upper limit on model weights--just not a written rule. This isn't being a mommy to the models--they already have every inch of their bodies scrutinized and have some pretty stringent body-rules.

That said I don't know if this is some sort of revolution--other forms of pop culture (especially TV) are probably more influential in terms of beauty and body types. Ideally, it would be nice if clothing manufacturers made clothes for the actual variety of body types that are out there and it would be nice if (some) models didn't feel the need to to harmful things in order to stay employed but I don't know that this is the best way to go about doing it. Women get all kinds of ugly body messages -- too big, too thin, too flat-chested, big-butt, etc. etc. It would be a lot more fun if we could judge the clothes more and the bodies (everybody's) less.

As long as you're eating enough for your body to be properly nourished, you're fine. The problem is with women that deliberatly starve themselves to in order to be clothes hangers.

Or, really, the problem (as I tried to make clear in the post) is not so much with individual women, but with an industry whose standards of normal (or "beautiful") encourage/require/reward that look.

I agree with what Lynn says about extreme thinness being a beauty standard-- I don't think it should be. I guess I am going on a bit of a tangent because I have seen several posts in Broadsheet recently that slam skinny women themselves rather than the disease of anorexia or the beauty industry.

Cleopatra, I know I'm okay. I'm not worried about my own health, I'm just annoyed when other women, you know, the sisterhood, see fit to heap scorn upon a body type that is normal and healthy for a lot of women. Of course it is unhealthy to get to a low weight by starving or using drugs, but if you are that way naturally it doesn't feel good to be accused of being anorexic, or to be called emaciated, or an unsexy "skeleton".

If you'd like to send Milan's mayor, Letizia Moratti, a note of encouragement, her official email is

sindaco.moratti@comune.milano.it

If my minimal Italian can be trusted, according to Milan's website, Ms Moratti has worked in international finance and was educated at a university specializing in government work, so she probably has at least some knowledge of English. For those of you who are wondering, here are the approximate minimum weights for models using a BMI of 18:

5'8" - 118lbs

5'10" - 126lbs

6'0" - 132lbs

(These minimum weights at these heights appear to me to be generally associated with gawky adolescent boys with no muscle tone, and yet Madrid ended up turning away 30% of models for being too skinny. Conceivably, the proportion at Milan would be even higher, since it's a more important fashion event.)

For those shorter people to whom this means nothing, someone who is 5'4" would need a minimum weight of 105 lbs, 5'6" a minimum of about 111lbs. Which is pretty damn skinny, no? So write to Letizia and say something supportive.

In my uninformed opinion, the excuse of "promoting healthy image" is a cover for what's really been bothering folks about models; skinny is not sexy. A person who's too skinny is just as repulsive and unattractive as a person who's morbidly obese. However, you can't deny someone a job because they're "not sexy enough". I would think even in Spain that would lead to a number of discrimination claims. Thus promoting healthy image could be a legal way around what they're ultimately trying to acomplish: purge the ugly skinny women in favor of sexy curvey women.

The whole thing is unfair of course. The models are judged solely on their physical attractiveness. But then, the whole point of being a model is to be attractive isn't it?

Thanks for the height/weight perspective, Liz. Here's another example of how the industry standards are out of whack and getting thinner and thinner:

When Claudia Schiffer, who is 5'11" started modeling, she was 60 kg (132 lb)... pretty thin, but at the time she was considered "voluptuous". (I hate that word-- in the fashion world, it means anything above a size 0... Kristin Davis is voluptuous, J.Lo is voluptuous, Eva Longoria is voluptuous... please, it's code for "size 2" or maybe a heifer-like size 4... it's often code for "breast implants" or "ethnically incapable of becoming ass-less"). When the waif look came into style, Schiffer lost 15 lb and dropped to 117. Hello? Almost 6 feet tall and 117 lb? That's like concentration camp thin...any man that thin would be hustled to a doctor and set up with a diet of peanut butter sandwiches and milkshakes, stat. But she kept working the runway, while the also "voluptuous" Cindy Crawford went off to act in bad movies and have babies. Claudia eventually reproduced, too, though only after leaving runway modeling.

Another example is Jodie Kidd. She got started as a model at around age 16... her career really took off after a bout of mononucleosis. Her pictures are up on pro-anorexia (pro-ana) web-sites around the world as the ultimate "thinspiration". After nearly having a nervous breakdown, she left modeling for two years, went up two dress sizes and came back to have Paris designers tell her she, despite still being quite thin, was too fat for the catwalk. Now she's not as thin as she was but modelling in England again as a "voluptuous" type.

An ever thinner standard is being set for actresses as well. Watch a re-run of friends from the shows early days-- Rachel and Monica look positively chubby compared to their latter day selves. During the course of the show, all the female stars lost 10 pounds while all the men seemed to gain 15. The star of Grey's Anatomy, Ellen Pompeo and Terri Hatcher of Desperate Housewives are both victims of the 'giant-bobble-head on a skeletal stick' look, but they turn up week after week in magazines as examples of style and good looks.

The issue is not discriminating against naturally thin women (and not even naturally slender women, by the way, are "naturally" skeletal)-- it's about whether or not the fashion and entertainment industries should be allowed to hold up obviously starved women as role models. To try to pretend that these women are not role models is ridiculous: they're in the public eye, they're on the covers of magazines, they're held up as fashion icons that are supposed to inspire us to buy the clothes/make-up/accessories they peddle... and they do inspire us to buy, because no matter how smart or conscious you are, you can't immunize yourself against the sea of ultra-thin images all around us. A minimum BMI of 18 would stil result in very thin models who would still have body proportions unattainable for most of the population, but it would at least prevent sick, powerless looking women from being held up as chic examples. Now if we could just work on misogynistic imagry in so many of those fashion shoots...