EDITORS of leading women's and teenage magazines pledged yesterday to adopt a new voluntary code of conduct banning skeletal models and celebrities from their pages.
The code is to be drawn up by a new industry-wide group that will include editors, photographers, fashion stylists and readers. It is part of an ambitious drive, led by the Government, to encourage the media to portray a wider range of women's shapes and sizes.
The moves were announced yesterday at the end of a meeting in London organised by Tessa Jowell, the Minister for Women, in response to increasing fears that media images of ultra-thin models are stripping young women of their self-esteem and contributing to a rise in eating disorders.
Liz Jones, editor of Marie Claire magazine, said that her readers had become fed up with seeing only images of skinny women in the media, whom they could never hope to emulate.
Although the new self-regulatory body for the magazine industry will have no statutory powers, Ms Jones said she hoped that it would become a powerful force in monitoring the subliminal messages that magazines were putting across to their readers by their constant use of rake-like models.
"Fashion is a very rarified world and I think there is a danger of it becoming detached from reality," she said. "A code of self-regulation would mean if an agency sent us a very thin model whose bones were showing through her skin, we would send her back and write to the agency as well as other magazines.
"Size is a very subjective thing but we could set down a minimum size for models we would use, and we could refuse to take adverts that show women in an offensive or unrealistic way," Ms Jones said. She added that the media also had a responsibility to talk about women in terms of their achievements in life and work, rather than their size.
Rebecca Martin, editor of the teen magazine Jump, said that magazines should drop their obsession with pop stars and present images of, for example, sportswomen or athletes. She also urged fashion retailers to stock more teenage fashions in larger sizes, possibly up to size 20.
Ms Jowell said the Government had a role in stimulating debate on the issue. "We need to liberate this generation of young girls from the tyranny their mothers and grandmothers have felt - that you have to be thin to be beautiful."
Jo Daly, 14, one of a group of teenage girls from a youth group in Northolt, West London, who attended the image summit, said: "The models on the catwalk and in magazines make me feel abnormal because they are so thin. They are not realistic. We want the media to stop draining our self-confidence by pointing out what we don't like about ourselves all the time. We are comparing ourselves with something that doesn't exist."
Some participants in the meeting were disappointed, however, at the focus on magazine images and the fashion industry and the absence of a wider debate on other causes of eating disorders, such as genetics, family history and cultural environment.
Lauri Kuhrt, of the Association of Model Agencies, said that agencies sent out thin models for photoshoots because that was what they were asked to do by magazines: "All we can do is to present the type of models that people ask for."
The Advertising Standards Authority also denied suggestions that it was responsible for regulating the types of models used in magazine advertisements.
"We are not going to start monitoring advertisements on the basis of the size of the women used. It is for the magazines to decide," he said.
close