On Friday November 11th, I attended the Vanderbilt Hillel Shabbat Dinner featuring guest speaker Dr. Rachel Adato. Dr. Adato is an Israeli gynecologist, lawyer, businesswoman and member of the Israeli parliment. Her talk on Friday night focused on the Israeli Photoshop law. This law mandates that models appearing in any promotional campaigns must have a BMI of 18.5 or higher, signifying that they are not significantly underweight. Additionally, anytime a model in an advisement must have a label on the photo stating so.
Dr. Adato spoke about the prevalence of eating disorders, because in particular Israel has a higher rate of eating disorders than many other highly developed countries. Specifically, most people who have eating disorders in Israel have anorexia. As a physician and lawmaker, Dr. Adato was approached by parents of a teen and asked if she could do something to stop the prevalence of eating disorders in Israel.
When passing this law to regulate the BMI of models, there was a lot of backlash. Most of the media companies were against it and refused to accept these changes. However, when Vogue magazine made the international decision to no longer use underweight models, that was the influence Dr. Adato’s case needed. The law was passed, but has only been two years, thus, there is no noticeable difference in the decline of eating disorders yet.
Ultimately, the take away message from this talk was to be open to your career path. Dr. Adato wants people to not be linear in their career path. My personal take away from this talk was that you may train your whole life for a degree and a certain stable career path but if you find passion in another area, follow that passion and make a difference.
Thank you to Vanderbilt Hillel and Dores for Israel for bringing Dr. Adato to campus to share her message!