Editorial: Sonoma legislator takes on Sunset Strip ‘dieticians’...

“It saddens me to think that the only ones I see/ Are mannequins looking stupid, being used and being thin”

– Belle and Sebastian, “Family Tree”

A disturbing report released this week by the California Budget and Policy Center touched upon the state’s broadening income-inequality gap, which found Sonoma County with the 13th largest earnings difference between the top 1 percent and “bottom” 99 percent out of 33 counties studied in the report.

That gap, as reported in the Press Democrat, found that the top 1 percent in Sonoma County earn an average income of $914,000, almost 20 times more than the average income of everyone else: $46,000.

Even more alarming, the Sacramento think tank found that in the years covered by the study, from 1989 to 2013, Sonoma County was one of the regions that saw skyrocketing incomes for its top 1 percent – while still experiencing an income decline for the other 99 percent of households.

Any “trickle down” economic theorists would have a hard time making their case in the 707 area code.

Some of the dreary findings can be attributed to the county’s preponderance of ag laborers, seasonal workers, senior-care providers and other low-earners who are frequent losers in the struggle for fair wages.

But there could be good news on the horizon, as a bill was introduced in the state legislature this week to improve conditions for state workers of all walks.

Well, one walk, specifically: the catwalk. And the workers protected aren’t $9 an hour grape pickers named Carla or Sofia, they’re 90-pound supermodels named Ashlee and Naomi.

The bill Sonoma Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) introduced Feb. 22 would require the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board and the State Department of Public Health to adopt a set of health standards for models. The legislation is an effort to promote healthier bodies – read: not detrimentally thin – in the modeling world and to be a better influence on body image in young women. Levine says he was inspired to author AB 2539 – which is the numeric nomenclature of the bill, not the required torso measurements for the models – in part to protect his two children from developing unrealistic body expectations driven by the media. If adjusting the media’s depiction of women is indeed the goal, we await Levine’s Disney princess legislation (we’re hoping he calls it “Ariel’s Law”).

Quite frankly, AB 2539 is probably a good idea – similar laws already exist in fashion meccas France, Italy and Spain – and there’s little to argue with in discouraging an industry’s well-reported pressures to keep off the polyunsaturated fats.

That being said, the benefits to Sonoma’s 10th district in tightening the screws on West Hollywood modeling agencies is yet unclear.

On the surface, it seems that Sonoma’s representative in the Assembly is going to bat for Olga Sherer and Snejana Onopka, while leaving our less-Nordic-sounding foreign names back home “dangerously thin” in a different way.

In speaking upon body image, Levine says he wants to curb “unrealistic expectations.” To that, we applaud. But there is a more pressing “unrealistic expectation” we wish local leaders would focus their energies upon: the expectation for Sonoma County workers to earn a wage that allows them the financial ability to live in Sonoma County.

Some workers’ starvation diets are by choice. Others are not.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.