Young teen models may face British catwalk ban

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Girls aged under 16 should be banned from catwalk modeling to protect them from eating disorders and sexual exploitation, a panel of fashion and health experts in Britain said on Wednesday.

Older teenagers also need more protection, including chaperones at shows, according to the Model Health Inquiry, a group investigating models' health.

The panel said there was a trend for the industry to use younger models, who are more vulnerable to eating disorders such as anorexia.

"There was also strongly expressed concern that it is profoundly inappropriate that girls under 16 ... should be portrayed as adult women," said Baroness Kingsmill, chairwoman of the panel.

"The risk of sexualizing these children was high and designers could risk charges of sexual exploitation."

The inquiry was set up by the British Fashion Council, which runs London Fashion Week, in the wake of a long-running controversy over super-thin "size zero" models.

The panel rejected the idea of weighing models and banning those under a certain weight. It said "size zero" doesn't exist in British shops and is "meaningless".

It received mixed evidence on whether models should have tests to assess their body mass index, a measure of fat.