LEADING figures in Israel’s fashion industry, alarmed by the number of young women suffering from bulimia or anorexia, are supporting a move to ensure models have “normal”, healthy figures.

Officials and doctors in Israel’s Health Ministry are backing the “look good and stay alive” campaign, and the country’s youngest member of Parliament has tabled a Bill that would require all models to undergo health checks before entering the profession. They would have to take six-monthly “MoTs” to ensure that they were not underweight.

Israeli officials say that 10 per cent of girls between 14 and 17 have eating disorders. Many teenage girls idolise models and believe they must diet obsessively to have any hope of a career on the catwalk.

One of Israel’s most successful fashion photographers, Adi Barkan, stumbled on the problem two years ago when he returned to Tel Aviv after a career in London and New York. He found two of his models making themselves vomit to keep their weight down. But he discovered the true scale of the problem when a television company filmed him searching for new faces.

Of the 12,000 aspiring models he auditioned, Mr Barkan and the documentary makers found that 1,644 were so anorexic they should have been admitted to hospital, with many in the 5ft 8in range typically weighing just 5st 7lb to 6st 4lb.

Mr Barkan now runs a programme to help anorexics. All the women on his modelling agency’s books must have a body mass index (BMI) — a height-to-body fat ratio — of at least 19. Some of the most serious anorexics’ BMI is just 7, while many underweight teenagers are 13 or 14. “I began to wonder where all this misery was coming from,” said Mr Barkan. “I realised we as professional photographers, fashion designers and advertisers were at least partly responsible.”

To protect models and project a better image to young women, he approached leading fashion clothing chains and food manufacturers and persuaded them to sign up to a charter promising they will not use models with a BMI of less than 19 from next month. He also persuaded Inbal Gavrieli, the MP, to introduce legislation insisting all models undergo an examination by a Government nutritionist.

Those deemed healthy would get a licence while any who were too thin would be given nutritional advice and a two-month deadline to put on weight or be barred. The Government is considering whether to support the Bill.

A TV advertisement highlighting the problem is to be filmed next week showing four models, each thinner than the last but each wishing they weighed less. The last in the sequence, Hella Rubenstein, 29, is a former model who stands 5ft 8in but weighs 4st 6lb. Filming had to be postponed last week when she was taken to hospital with heart problems.

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