LONDON - A gathering of the glitterati in Downing St barely makes news these days, so common are such events believed to be in the youth-conscious days of new Labour.
But when fashion editors, designers and models gather at the Prime Minister's home for a Body Image Seminar on June 21, a chunk or two of fur is bound to fly.
It is time for the fashion and beauty press to stop displaying their wares on stick-thin models, the Government believes.
The women's ministers, Tessa Jowell and Baroness Margaret Jay, have called what is being dubbed a "superwaif summit" after hearing a chorus of complaints from young girls during a series of consultation sessions about the pressures they face.
The media had lost sight of what most teenagers actually looked like, the teenagers argued, and as a result many of them felt constantly besieged by idealised images they could not live up to.
At the meeting, they will be given the chance to tackle the industry they feel is trying to straitjacket them. Recalcitrant editors will be asked to defend their apparent belief that photographs of thin girls sell magazines, while sympathetic journalists will argue that there is support for their attempts to introduce diversity.
The summit will include fashion magazine editors and newspaper journalists.
Also present will be Susie Orbach, the author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, and a representative of Storm model agency.
Some fashion journalists have already protested that the exercise is a case of the "nanny state" running wild. The Government has no right to poke its sanctimonious nose inside the nation's wardrobes in this way, they believe.
However, Jowell says the response has largely been positive.
"The women's unit has had its biggest-ever postbag, and it has been almost wholly supportive of the need to open up this issue," she said.
Ministers are not calling in the industry for a dressing-down or attempting to tell them what they should or should not print, she says, but she makes no apology for ordering the event.
"If you ask young people what matters to them and you give a commitment that as a Government you will listen to the things they say, it is unfair to then refuse to address the issues that matter most to them."
This is not just an attempt to persuade the media to change its ways, then, but an exercise designed to show young people the Government is listening to them.
If successful, the event will be followed by a programme of action which could include better research on the incidence of eating disorders, though Jowell refuses to say more in advance of the meeting.
The seminar will doubtless provoke another flurry of hostile, "nanny state" articles. But with some of the country's most powerful tabloids apparently already on their side, Jowell and Jay may award themselves a small, celebratory cream bun.
- INDEPENDENT
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