AnyBody

Susie Orbach has co-founded AnyBody, "a website giving women a voice to challenge the limited physical representation of females in contemporary society". They will be holding a flash protest in London today (corner of Cromwell Rd and Exhibition Rd, 2pm) against the London Fashion Week.

Susie Orbach's 'Fat is Feminist Issue' was one of the first books (published in 1978) to draw a relationship between self-worth, weight and power. Since them many other feminist have made this relationship and it may seem obvious now that women (and men) equate body size with self-worth, but in the late70s, this was a controversial idea. Fat is Feminist Issue is often described as the antithesis to diet books.

London Fashion Week has caused controversy by NOT following in the footsteps of Spain's and Italy's fashion bodies who have banned ultra-skinny models from their catwalks (i.e. models have to have a BMI of 18 or above - the World Health Organisation has deemed a BMI of 16 to mean starvation). Concern over the ultra-skinny/size zero phenomena escalated last year when two models, Ana Carolina Reston and Luisel Ramos, died as a result of their anorexia/bulimia.

USA and Britain's fashion councils have decided not to ban ultra-skinny models from their fashion weeks. Stuart Rose, chief executive of M&S and part time chairman of the British Fashion Council, was quoted as saying "Are we going to ask people to walk through detectors for body mass index and say 'I'm sorry you're rejected'. Outright bans and indeed legislation is definitely not a route we want to go down."- I'm sorry....doesn't that imply that models aren't being told they are too fat? As if models aren't weighed and measured and told they must loose weight? WHAT! Such hypocrisy.