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December 18, 2006

AUSTRALIAN supermodel Gemma Ward has welcomed an Italian campaign to banish schoolgirl and sickly-skinny models from Milan's catwalks.

A code of conduct between the Italian Chamber of Fashion and Italy's Youth Ministry, to be signed this week, will ban models younger than 16.

And all models will need a medical certificate from a doctor attesting they do not suffer an eating disorder, as part of a campaign to curb anorexia and bulimia.

"It's a great move," Ward, who was 15 when she first modelled for Miuccia Prada in Milan, said last nigt in Sydney, where she is starting rehearsals to star in an Australian film, The Black Balloon.

Ward, now 19, is a fixture on international catwalks and has fronted campaigns for top designers including Calvin Klein, Valentino, Prada, Hermes and Yves Saint Laurent.

The Perth schoolgirl had never wanted to model, but was plucked from the audience while she watched her friends at a talent contest in 2002. Her wide-eyed, willowy looks shot her to instant fame on the cover of US Vogue, spawning the recent fashion infatuation with the "kewpie-doll" look.

Ward said not all teenage girls shared her fortune at having parents who insisted on accompanying her to fashion shows until she turned 17.

Her advice to teenagers was to finish high school before modelling full-time.

Ward's mother Claire, a nurse, agreed with the Italian plan to require medical certificates. "If you get a few influential designers wanting stick-thin models, then young girls think that's what they need to be," she said.

"They don't have the perspective of age and wisdom."

Mrs Ward said she would have preferred her daughter to finish Year 12. "Gem's had to live in an adult world since she was 15," she said. "She's managed it very well and had a lot of fun, but a lot of girls don't. It's really, really difficult for girls, especially Australians so far from home. The (shows) are full of smokers, full of people who are older. It's all very cool and adult, and if you're very young and impressionable it could be easy to try to fit into that kind of culture and do the wrong thing."

Ward's father Gary, a doctor, said his athletic daughter was a healthy weight but he was concerned about girls starving themselves to emulate her look.

Italy's self-regulatory code of conduct - which seems aimed at the hordes of barely pubescent wannabe models arriving from eastern Europe in search of fame and fortune - follows Spain's ban on underweight models at the September fashion shows.

In Spain, models must have a body mass index - or height to weight ratio - of at least 18.5, in line with World Health Organisation recommendations.

Brazil also launched a health campaign after a Brazilian model died of anorexia last month.

Details of the Italian campaign, leaked to Italian newspapers yesterday, reveal that under-16s would be banned because they are "not yet ready for the world of professional fashion".

In Italy, three million people suffer from anorexia and bulimia, medical disorders in which sufferers can starve themselves to death in the mistaken belief they look fat.

Source:

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story...5007192,00.html

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How can you accuse her of becoming [in your own words] "another fat actress" - just because that dress was fitted terribly wrong for her body?? That mistake would make any model [who is not sickly thin] look inproportional also! btw: that dress is ugly to begin with! even perhaps if the colour was different it wouldn't make her look so washed out either.

Everyone is entitled to a bad photo so calm down!!

We all saw other recent photos of her on the runway/ backstage & other pics of the launch of the makeup she is promoting- her dress was fitted properly & she looked as gorgeous as she ever was.

I for one am very impressed that she has decided to accept & welcome this new Italian campaign because it shows that as she is such a top model she has a voice & is using it not to go against what the industry she is in believes in, but to make sure that the clothes we see on the runway is bein gpromoted for the right type of audience- so i can't do anything other than congratulate her for voicing her opiniom & running with it.

xx just my 2 cents

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