LU 044: Elena Rossini – The woman who helps changing the world with her movie "The Illusionists".

Hey there, lovely radicals: Podcast ahead! This week on the "Life. Unrestricted." podcast, I get to talk to Elena Rossini from Como, Italy and Paris, France. Elena is a filmmaker, photographer, social entrepreneur and public speaker. Her latest film is called "The Illusionists", a feature-length documentary about the marketing of unattainable beauty ideals around the world. Filming locations included the United States, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Lebanon, India and Japan. The film has been featured in countless news outlets, and I hope it will be talked about for a long time. Elena has been taking "The Illusionists" on tour, showing it at the biggest companies in Silicon Valley (Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter...) and at dozens of renowned universities in the United States and Europe. Apart from being a filmmaker, Elena is also the founder and editor-in-chief of "No Country for Young Women", a website whose aim is to provide positive role models for young girls. The site features over 100 interviews of women representing five continents, seven decades, and over two dozen professions – from NASA engineers, illustrators, architects, to filmmakers and entrepreneurs. In 2014 Rossini co-founded "Gender Gap Grader", a platform empowering companies and organizations with innovative tools to measure the gender gap. Today, you’ll hear Elena talk about: – Why she thinks that right now is the best time to be an activist – Why she is concerned about kids and body image in the age of social media and ruthless advertising – Why she lived in so many places and what country she feels most rooted in – What upsets her most about how women are being portrayed and presented in the media and in advertisement – Why we often buy into (and literally buy) the message of products we don’t really need – How much time we end up wasting just "to look in order" – What we really put on our bodies and skins every day – that basically only hurts us – just to look and smell like we think we should – What she found young girls to be most affected by in terms of their body image – The danger behind online-personalities that present their disordered behavior in a way that makes people who watch their workout-/diet-/make-up videos think that they have to achieve the same look – What sparked the idea in her to make a movie about how we are, as women, being presented with illusions, and how we then start to perform an illusion to the outside world – What she found out about the growing epidemic of body dissatisfaction in women and men – Why it took her eight years to complete "The Illusionists" – How she gets treated as a relatively young, female filmmaker – How she responded to the people who wanted to make her believe that she wasn’t "able enough" to make this movie herself – Why she selected the countries that she did – What shocking discoveries she made – Why she strongly believes in activism and how she saw that it really DOES change things – What kind of reaction she got from advertising companies when she screened the film – Why the current way eating disorders are represented in documentaries can contribute to the continuation of the problem, and why it keeps many women/men from actually seeking help – What she intents to do in the future to help women change those self-defeating behaviors – What her project "The Realists" will be about – Why we should spend more time OFFline than online... ... And so much more! Check out Elena’s work: www.elenarossini.com www.theillusionists.org The books she mentioned in our conversation: „Fat is a Feminist Issue“ by Susie Orbach, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Feminist-Issue-ORBACH-SUSIE/dp/1784753092/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie;=UTF8&qid;=1490895011&sr;=1-1&keywords;=fat+is+a+feminist+issue Here are books about the dangerous power of advertising, by Jean Kilbourne, Mary Pipher, and others: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords;=jean+kilbourne „Amusing ourselves to death“ by Neil Postman, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.de/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X Please consider supporting the podcast with a donation on "Patreon"; so that I can keep producing it. Thank you! Here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/lifeunrestricted Like the podcast? Great! Do subscribe on iTunes (Apple): https://itunes.apple.com/ch/podcast/life.-unrestricted.-podcast/id1130713233?mt=2 or on Stitcher (Android): http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=93987&refid; ********* Don't forget!********* Make sure to join my tribe and meet some of the most supportive, loving and kind people of all shapes and sizes, including great coaches and leaders! We’re right over here at: http://www.lifeunrestricted.org/join/