Economic analysis finds that banning very skinny models from catwalk and pictures from magazines may prevent 'epidemic'
Governments are justified in using the law to prevent modelling agencies from using very skinny women on catwalks and stop magazines from printing adverts and photographs that suggest extreme thinness is attractive, according to research from the LSE.
The first-ever economic analysis of anorexia, studying nearly 3,000 young women in the UK and the rest of Europe, found that the social and cultural environment influences decisions by young women to starve themselves in search of what they perceive to be an ideal body shape.
Young women, who make up 90% of anorexia nervosa cases, are influenced by the size and weight of their peer group.
Anorexia, say the researchers, is a socially transmitted disease and appears to be more common in countries such as France, where women are thinner than the European average. It mostly affects girls and women between the ages of 15 and 34, they found, who were willing to trade off their health against self-image.
LSE economist Dr Joan Costa-Font and Professor Mireia Jofre-Bonet from City University say that reducing the mass circulation of pictures of emaciated models and celebrities and restricting adverts in which they feature could lift some of the social pressure women feel to be thin.
"Government intervention to adjust individual biases in self-image would be justified to curb the spread of a potential epidemic of food disorders," they write in their paper, to be published in the academic journal Economica later this year.
"The distorted self-perception of women with food disorders and the importance of the peer effects may prompt governments to take action to influence role models and compensate for social pressure on women driving the trade-off between ideal weight and health."
Governments are increasingly willing to regulate the fashion and advertising industry, they say. Some are also prepared to intervene by supporting social media campaigns to try to persuade women that it is neither healthy nor attractive to be excessively thin.
"In some European countries, there has been increasing debate over the conditions, especially since the Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died from anorexia in 2006," said Dr Costa-Font.
"More generally, it is becoming increasingly apparent that standards of physical appearance are important and powerful motivators of human behaviour, especially regarding health and food. Excessive preoccupation with self-image is regarded as a contributing factor to the proliferation of food disorders, especially among young women. Anorexia, together with other food disorders such as bulimia nervosa, can be characterised by a distorted body image accompanied by an eating obsession.
"We found evidence that social pressure, through peer shape, is a determinant in explaining anorexia nervosa and a distorted self-perception of one's own body."
The researchers found that women in Austria were the thinnest – they had the lowest average BMI (body mass index – a measure of weight related to height), at 23.67, against a European average of 25. For young women, the lowest average BMI was in Italy, at 21.40. The highest anorexia rates were in Austria, Italy and Ireland.
In the UK, the average woman's BMI was 25.98 – the highest of the 17 countries in the study. On anorexia, the UK came 12th, with a rate of 0.34%. Austria's anorexia rate was 1.35% among all women and 4.02% among young women.