Super-skinny models in town for London Fashion Week now have one less excuse to skip a meal.
A restaurant popular with celebrities and fashionistas in the British capital is offering free food to so-called "size zero" clothes horses who have come under attack for promoting a stick-thin image that critics say encourages eating disorders in young women.
The Bumpkin restaurant in the very swank Notting Hill neighborhod is offering models with a Body Mass Index of less than 18 the opportunity to gorge on fish pies, lamb burgers, king prawns and scallops.
The size-zero issue has dogged fashion shows around the world since two anorexic Latin American models died last year. The controversy has dominated the current spring fashion season.
Madrid last year banned models with a BMI below 18 from taking part in fashion shows. BMI is a measure expressed as a ratio of weight to height. A BMI limit of 18 means a 5-foot-8 inch model must weigh at least 120 pounds.
"If I could recommend a dish to a size-zero model, it would be a [pot pie] containing leeks, chicken and bacon; it's enough to keep you warm and energized all day," Bumpkin general manager Dariush Nejad said in a statement.
We think after consuming that cholesterol-laden dish, scrawny catwalkers will simultaneously boost their BMI and go into immediate cardiac arrest.
Not-so-bad ideas
- Moo brew: A liquor shop in Japan's largest dairy farming region has stopped crying about local spilt milk and started making beer from it instead.
"We came up with the idea after hearing about surplus milk," said Chitoshi Nakahara, head of the Nakahara liquor shop on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.Milk consumption has been declining steadily in Japan, and Hokkaido disposed of nearly 900 tons of milk last March due to over-production, according to the Japan Dairy Association.Nakahara's new brew, "Bilk," is about 30 percent milk. It also contains hops, and the production process does not differ much from that of regular beer, he said.His shop started selling Bilk, which apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer, on Feb. 1 after spending about six months developing the product with a local brewer.Hokkaido resident Kaori Takahashi, who took part in a recent tasting session, was quoted in a Japanese newspaper saying she liked Bilk. "It's got a fruity taste," she said.We know what you're thinking: Cookies and Bilk.
- Here's one for the we-kid-you-not file: Bus passengers in Bulgaria's capital are being shown soft-core porn films on giant video screens at night.
During the day, the plasma screens in the Sofia station show bus times, but the night shift now has the porn films on view.A spokesman for the bus-station management said: "We wanted to give the passengers something to take their minds off the cold and to pass the time while waiting for a bus, and there are unlikely to be children around that time of night."Please tell us they also lock the public restrooms after dark.