We regulate all kinds of business behaviour in order to protect workers. The minimum wage, anti-smoking laws work safety regulations... there are literally hundreds of laws enacted soley to protect employees from abusive employers. Why should there not be a law designed to protect models from agencies/stylists/designers (aka employers) who insist that they maintain a weight that is not healthy? What is the big deal here? Are thin women not worth protecting?

When I read about Armani's attempts to blame the media and stylists for the fact that fashion models are anorexic, I just about lost my lunch. Designers are absolutely at the heart of the problem. Save for a few "plus size" lines, none of which are considered fashionable, the vast majority of designers do not make clothes larger than a size 14. Increasingly, designers won't make their clothes larger than a size 12 (Marc Jacobs), and now some are topping out at a size 10 (Roberto Cavalli). Armani says he just wants girls who will make the clothes look good, but when the clothes are made for women who have no boobs and no hips, who's really fueling the "super-thin" frenzy here?

Moreover, designers are the ones who hire the models who walk the runway. If they really weren't interested in promoting the super skinny look, they have the ultimate power to change it. Yet they haven't.

It's certainly facile of Armani to say "don't look at me, I just make clothes." But the truth of it is that designers are uniquely empowered to shape the fashion industry. Indeed, if they are truly artists, instead of merely tailors, then reshaping the industry to meet their vision of what the world should be and how it should look is supposedly what they do. Armani's protestations that he is powerless to change fashion's obsession with skinny are an unwitting confession that industry as a whole is nothing but a giant marketing machine aimed at preying on women's insecurity in order to make money.

Designers have no interest in designing clothes that look better on real women because it spoils the fantasy that drives their bottom line. For fashion to really make money, designers have to keep women in a constant state of aspiration, constantly seeking that thing that will make them look perfect and of the moment. That's how you keep a woman buying a new pair of jeans and a new suit and a new cocktail dress every season, even though she's got a million of them cluttering up her closet already. Tell her over and over again that no matter how skinny she is it isn't enough. No matter how beautiful that suit she bought last year is, it's not enough. No matter how many handbags she has, it's not enough. Designers cram the catwalks with impossibly skinny women because it's the ultimate reminder to a woman that whatever she is, she isn't enough because she's not THIS -- buy that skirt and maybe you might have a chance.

The designer that bucks this system is going to be a hero and gather more media attention and have more stylists begging for product than he can shake a stick at. He'll also make a zillion bucks. Too bad all these tailors (oh, I mean designers) don't have the balls to do it.

...when you consider that those public figures who do get involved in the body image debate are mostly at the other end of the continuum, proselytizing against obesity, in order to prevent or at least slow down the increase in diabetes, particularly among children.

Of course, the government seems to want to get involed at that end of the spectrum with its pyramids and admonitions to eat 5-a-day. Fruits & vegetables, that is. But, so far, the government has only caused more confusion, not less.

Any real difference that happens, in this case, will have to come from Hollywood. Already, there are hopeful signs, when you see how curvy some of the most sought-after young stars are.

Would be that women's clothing were made and sold with measurements, just like men's clothes. It would be much easier to track who exactly is demanding these superthin models, is it the designers, the stylists or maybe it would give the models a better idea of what to weigh and what their measurements should be because instead of just being handed a garment that says size 4, which means they starve themselves to make sure they can fit in everything, when maybe if they had some real numbers to work with, maybe there would be less body dysmorphia because real numbers are easier to handle than trying to figure out what is the difference between a size 2 and a size 4?

I can see why our government would be wary of trying to regulate the BMI's of models though. Being anorexic or bulemic isn't healthy, but neither is smoking or drinking heavily and there is nothing the government does to say hey, no cancer causing cigarettes for you adult person. I'm sure that there are more eating disorders in the modeling and actress profession, than say with school teachers, but there is no proof that it's over 50 percent of women who have this problem. Plus there really is no law against self mutilation and when we are defending the rights of women to have abortions, we don't want to wander into the murky territory of regulating women's weight for their own good in a particular industry. Plus, no one is forcing these women to be models and to be judged almost daily on their appearance. I think it's up to the models to complain, for them to either stop working or do something to sort of strike, but they don't because they are desperate to be looked at and afraid that if they do stand up, they'll never work again. As long as some people are willing to mutilate themselves to do a job, they are ultimately responsible for deciding to binge and purge or not eat at all instead of just realizing that maybe you can't be anything you want to be.

The laws governing non-smoking work places are because the people who choose not to smoke shouldn't be harmed by those who do.