Paris: Anyone encouraging dangerous thinness and excessive dieting could be jailed under a draft law aimed at tackling the growing problem of anorexia in France.

The proposal would punish “incitement to excessive thinness” in magazines, on websites and in other media.

The world’s first use of the law to tackle eating disorders is broadly aimed at the media and fashion world, but especially at the websites and blogs of the so-called pro-ana movement.

While many are support groups, others promote starvation as a “life-style choice”, with girls and young women posting their wasting images as “thinspiration” for others.

Up to 40,000 people, the vast majority women, suffer from anorexia in France — an illness that strikes most frequently in adolescence.

The law, to be debated next week, proposes up to three years in jail and a £36,000 fine if the incitement provoked the death of an anorexia sufferer. Incitement alone would carry two years in jail. The prison term is raised to three years with a $45,000 fine if the person dies.

While not seeking to target bona fide dieting, the law would punish any encouragement to make “people deprive themselves of food in order to get excessively thin”, or that constituted an “open apology of anorexia”.

The proposal coincides with the French fashion industry signing a charter to promote healthy body images among models.

Valerié Boyer, a Right-wing UMP senator, said she felt compelled to draw up the Bill after being shocked by an advertising campaign featuring an anorexic French woman last year.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have come under pressure around the globeto ban their pro-ana entries. Last month a website that originated in France caused an outcry for encouraging children as young as 9 to embrace plastic surgery and extreme dieting in the search for the perfect figure.

The Miss Bimbo site invites users to create a virtual doll, keep it “waif thin” with diet pills and buy it breast implants and facelifts.

The website attracted 1.2 million players in France.

Source : DNA