About mod­els and the effects of the media on body image in their pop­u­la­tions, at least. Fol­low­ing Spain’s move last year that banned ultra-thin mod­els from cat­walks, France is act­ing. The “French par­lia­men­t’s low­er house adopt­ed a ground­break­ing bill Tues­day that would make it ille­gal for any­one — includ­ing fash­ion mag­a­zines, adver­tis­ers and Web sites — to pub­licly incite extreme thin­ness.”

British researchers are also rec­om­mend­ing action. “With con­stant images of stick-thin, size-zero mod­els, tiny-waist­ed pop princess­es and actress­es is putting young girls’ health at risk and fuel­ing the rise in eat­ing dis­or­ders, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Janet Trea­sure of the Eat­ing Dis­or­ders Research Unit at Kings Col­lege Lon­don.”

It’s a relief to know that, some­where in the world, peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to this stuff. It’s tire­some to hear the con­stant folderol about the “obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic” here in the U.S., with almost no bal­anc­ing cov­er­age.

“Anoth­er blue sweater? You have four of those. Why not get some­thing dif­fer­ent for a change?”

“No, I have navy, corn­flower, Williams­burg, and baby blue sweaters. This one is roy­al blue. That’s total­ly dif­fer­ent!”

Okay guys, I know that you thought women were mak­ing up some of the col­or names we use. Char­treuse? Why not say green? And garnet—that’s red, right? What’s this about plum, amethyst, grape, vio­let, mauve, and fuschia all being dif­fer­ent? They’re all pur­ple, aren’t they?

No, real­ly, they aren’t. We don’t make them up just to vex you. They’re all very, very dif­fer­ent, which is why we would nev­er con­sid­er wear­ing brick red lip­stick with a cher­ry red sweater. Ick!

Now there’s help for you. Free help, even!

In a very unpop­u­lar move, Spain has banned appear­ances by fash­ion mod­els who’s body mass index is too low.

Italy is con­sid­er­ing fol­low­ing suit. The lan­guage in the leg­is­la­tion makes it clear that the pur­pose of the ban is to encour­age health­i­er media images, due to the grow­ing inci­dence of eat­ing dis­or­ders diag­nosed every year.

Frankly, I can’t begin to imag­ine the U.S. gov­ern­ment even con­sid­er­ing that kind of leg­is­la­tion. We do have a freer press here (on the sur­face, at least), but that does­n’t explain all the dif­fer­ences.