garote | The backlash hits the mainstream

From a September 16 CBS news article:

Organizers of Spain's top annual fashion show on Saturday rejected five models as being too thin to appear in this year's event.

The show, known as the Pasarela Cibeles, had decided earlier this month not to allow women below a predetermined body mass index to parade down the catwalk.

...

Five of the 68 models who showed up for appraisal failed the test, the doctors said. The models were over 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed less than 121.25 pounds, Monereo said.

...

The show, which starts Monday and runs until Friday, wanted to project an image of beauty, elegance and health, and also banned makeup that makes models appear sickly, organizer Cuca Solana said.

"Clearly we don't want walking skeletons," Solana said.

From an article on CNN:

Madrid's regional government, which sponsors the show and imposed restrictions, said it did not blame designers and models for anorexia. It said the fashion industry had a responsibility to portray healthy body images.

From a BBC news article:

The World Health Organisation says a person's BMI should be between eighteen-and-a-half and about twenty-five. Organisers of Madrid Fashion Week have decided to ban underweight models who have a BMI of less than eighteen.

The Association of Fashion Designers says thirty per cent of would be participants fail this test, including Spanish top model, Esther Canadas, who reportedly has a BMI of fourteen.

(Note how the BBC news article is part of an ongoing program to teach internet visitors how to speak English. Pretty clever choice - using international news content for this purpose.)

In case you're wondering what Esther Canadas looks like, here's a photo (stolen from some some guy on a Geocities site, who scanned it illegally from some unidentified magazine. Yay for ""fair"" ""use"".)