Would you prefer to look like a Victoria Secrets Model or a healthy female farmer from Bali?

It has been a lot of fun – and educational and, actually, inspiring – to watch the fallout from Madrid’s decision to ban hyper-skinny models from its formerly much-overlooked Fashion Week. In case you missed the details, Madrid’s regional government recently decreed that models participating in the city’s Pasarela Cibeles fashion shows had to have a body-mass index, or B.M.I., of at least 18 – considerably higher than the B.M.I. of most runway models, who tend to fall closer to 15. Normally, I’m not one for getting excited about the naturally occurring virtues of female politicians.

But there was something truly stirring this week about seeing women across Europe using the privilege of their public platform to stake out a position on an issue that would normally pass under the radar. In Spain, Concha Guerra, a regional official, spoke out against the warping “mirror” of fashion. In Milan, mayor Letizia Moratti and municipal counselor Tiziana Maiolo bashed designers for offering up “unhealthy” models and essentially ordered them to bar the ultra-thin from their upcoming Fashion Week shows or face a city-wide ban.

In the United Kingdom, culture secretary Tessa Jowell was joined by a number of members of Parliament in urging Britain’s fashion industry to stop using the “stick-thin” to showcase their talents. “The industry has a moral duty to look after the women in its employ,” is how Sarah Teather, an M.P. and education spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrat party put it. You didn’t hear anything remotely like that around here.

Stan Herman, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, told Agence France Presse that banning the super-skinny was tantamount to discrimination.