Model Legislation and Symbolic Politics

Why do states pass laws that are largely unenforceable—particularly in domains long treated as private, like beauty and the body? In the early 2000s, unrealistic beauty ideals and their public health consequences became the subject of public concern across Europe. French lawmakers responded by passing a law in 2016 requiring fashion models to meet minimum weight thresholds. Models themselves, however, often describe the law as misguided, ineffective, or impossible to enforce. I conduct an interpretive, discursive analysis of parliamentary debates, as well as leverage field observation and interviews with lawmakers, attorneys, doctors, and fashion professionals to demonstrate how elites come to perceive models’ bodies as appropriate targets of regulation. While this paper draws specifically on beauty and its regulation, its findings have broader implications for theories of lawmaking, feminist public policy, and symbolic politics in contemporary democracies.