Operation Bikini - Battlefields of Beauty

Direction: Birgit Herdlitschke
Script: Irene Höfer, Tatjana Turanskyj and Birgit Herdlitschke
arte theme evening, 94 min., ARTE / Medea Film - Irene Höfer, 2010

We are obsessed by our bodies. We want them to be thinner, better, more beautiful. We are all more or less on diet - or at least we feel we should be. Everybody knows somebody, who is or was on a diet; we all have heard of new pills to get thin, and we all know someone who is bulimic and / or unhappy with her body.

"From 2001 to 2003 I walked around in a fog. Sometimes I bolted upright in the middle of the night 'What if there are calories in diet coke?' I´d lie in the dark and panic." Crystal Renn, 24, Plus-Size-Supermodel, about her time as an Anorexic

And if we are skinny enough we have our nose adjusted, our breasts lifted - or at least we think about having it done.

"I don´t know any girl that is 100% ok with her body." Elena Vasilaki, 17, schoolgirl in Crete

We want to find out what hides behind the beauty- and diet-craze. Why do we spend billions of Dollars on pharmazeuticals to lose weight? Why have 90% of all women been on a diet (97% of them without success!)?

"It was only years later that I dared to throw away my balance. I feel much more free now." Katharina Lazovic, 32, trucking agent and amateur-model

Why aren´t even the skinniest people not happy with their bodies? Why do almost all women constantly worry about their looks? What has happened, why don´t we accept our bodies the way they are?

"What I´ve seen over the last 30 years is a level of body hatred, body fear, body distress, beauty terror, that is so intense that we know right now girls don´t feel comfortable in their bodies and they think about them all the time - every 15 minutes." Susie Orbach, Psychologist & Author

Broadcast date:

Operation Bikini - Battlefields of Beauty
24th of April 2011, 10:00 pm, arte