The Women’s Equality Party notes with dismay that it is currently standard practice, and completely legal, for modelling agencies to ask models to lose medically dangerous amounts of weight. As a result, eating disorders are considerably higher among models than in the general population, and all but one body type has been almost entirely eclipsed from mainstream fashion imagery. This is harmful to both models and to women and girls at large, at whom fashion imagery is disproportionately targeted and who are nine times more likely than their male counterparts to suffer from an eating disorder. It should be illegal for models to be discriminated against in this way, and women and girls generally deserve to see a wider range of shapes and sizes depicted within fashion imagery.
The Women’s Equality Party calls upon the government to redress this situation by:
1) passing legislation which bans modelling agencies from asking models to lose weight from the time they first meet; and
2) holding a select committee inquiry into designers’ aesthetic choices and whether these encourage unhealthy practices.
This Party Conference further calls upon the British Fashion Council to conduct an internal inquiry on ways to encourage and aid designers showing at London Fashion Week to vary their sample sizes.