A young woman with flagging self-worth, she already had enough to grapple with in Paris, where fashion dictates ultrathin ideals.<\/p>\n
“I’ve lost 12 kilos [26 pounds], but I feel heavy,” wrote a blogger identifying herself only as Leila this month in an online journal devoted to her eating disorder. “Heavy, and at the same time, empty.”<\/p>\n
But the fact that Leila’s blog advocates anorexia has made her something of an outlaw overnight. On Tuesday, France’s lower house of parliament passed a bill that makes it a crime to promote “excessive thinness” or extreme dieting.<\/p>\n
Coming on the heels of related initiatives in Spain and Italy, the ban is the latest and most far-reaching attempt to stem a disorder \u201d\u201c and an image of womanhood \u201d\u201c with which hundreds of thousands of Europeans wrestle. But how effective will the measures \u201d\u201c and some are quite creative \u201d\u201c be?<\/p>\n