The Illusionists is a documentary made by the filmmaker Elena Rossini to explore the ideals of beauty in the occidental countries. Elena Rossini has been travelling around eight countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia over the course of seven years.
"We're losing bodies as fast as we're losing languages," says the British psychotherapist Susie Orbach in the documentary. Others experts have also commented the documentary and they criticise how the ideals of beauty are affecting all kind of people: "Actually, man-made Western beauty ideals have spread to the rest of the world through globalization and are now being upheld as models even in places like India and Japan".
The Western ideals of beauty are penetrated in all the cultures of the world and they are causing several health problems. For example, the eating disorders to achieve the "ideal" thin body are increasing and not only is the USA but in other parts of the world.Rossini has created this documentary because he sees the body dissatisfaction like an epidemic that has appeared in different cultures.
Japan is one example of this globalization of the Western ideals f beauty that has affected their society. Japanese women are under incredible pressure to have an ideal body. Japanese culture has always had distinct standards of beauty like curvy figures that were associated with positive values like wealth and fertility.But since the decade of the 1980s the Japanese women are trying to copy the body of Western. As a consequence, currently about 30% of the women in their 20s are underweight.
The fact of the globalization and the power that have the American media has exported their ideas of beauty to the rest of the world. Japanese people, for example, see in the magazines the bodies of the models that are thin, with long legs and they also want to be like them.
Another country that is affected for the Wester world is Libano, which is the country with the most plastic surgery procedures. In this country, the ideals of Western countries are related to being rich. People see the famous characters and the money they earn and associate the fact to be like them with have money. It's also in this way because not everybody can afford the surgery. But in Libano to be like Western models are not only a equated to wealth but with happiness. People in this countries think that been like Western people is important for their career or have good friends.
But this increasing interest to become "perfect" has been noticed in the number of cases of eating disorders. The number of cases has increased in the last years and they are affecting young people each time. In India, girls are fighting to have the image that has never been considered like "beauty" in their country.
How to fight against this change of the image is a question that a lot of professionals are trying to answer. Most of theme think that the key is in the individuals, if all the women should look at the mirror and if they liked what they saw, then we would have to remodel the capitalism form. We can finish with this system of oppression and manipulation, we only have to realize that everybody is different and it is not an imperfection.
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