France wants to ban ads that feature anorexic models

France's health minister, Olivier Veran, has announced her support for criminalizing advertisements that feature anorexic models.

Veran wants a forthcoming health bill to include language making it illegal for designers to employ models who have eating disorders. Modeling agencies would be required to submit medical reports verifying that their models "have maintained a healthy mass-to-height ratio," The Associated Press reports. The law would also target pro-anorexia websites, and people who run sites that promote the disorder could face a year in prison and $10,575 in fines.

If France approves the measure, it would join Israel and Spain in "cracking down on the glorification of dangerously thin models," AP notes. Spain has banned models with body mass-to-height ratios below 18, and Israel passed a law banning underweight models in 2013.

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AP notes that about 40,000 people in France suffer from anorexia, and 90 percent of them are women.