The aesthetic procedures industry, driven by the search for status and the influence of social networks, has experienced exponential growth globally following the COVID-19 pandemic, but its dark side is its involvement with organized crime. This is what journalist Ana Lilia Pérez warns in her recent book The Perfect Body.
Mexico City, November 30 (However).– Mexico, along with countries like Colombia and the United States, has established itself as a center of “aesthetic tourism”a phenomenon that feeds a market in which “sometimes they involve the legal with the illegal,” said the journalist Ana Lilia Pérezwho publishes The perfect body (Grijalbo), an investigation that exposes the health risks and illicit practices that thrive in this lucrative sector.
This mix, warns the SinEmbargo collaborator, has led to a “huge proliferation of illegal businesses or practices that sometimes occur in places that may be clandestine or even in places with a more private environment,” such as the so-called “duck clinics” in Mexico.
The problem not only lies in the lack of licenses, but in the use of unqualified personnel and, crucially, in the “type of substances they are using” many of them prohibited such as the misnamed biopolymers, which circulate in the markets under false names.
The high profitability of this sector has captured the attention of criminal groups, turning it into a vehicle for illicit operations. Ana Lilia Pérez points out that these establishments, often clandestine, are “also part of money laundering mechanisms.”
The journalist remembers, for example, her previous investigations into the issue of the illegal sale of fuel where she identified aesthetic businesses, nightclubs, and others that “were also used as a means of money laundering.”
The link with crime goes beyond money laundering, extending to the falsification of medical supplies.
“Drugs that are used or substances that are used that are fashionable now to lose weight… are being falsified by criminal groups to place them on the global market,” Pérez asserted. These counterfeit products are offered at a lower cost, complicating the health oversight landscape. Status Seeking and Body Dysmorphia
Another central aspect of the research is the social and psychological root of this trend. The search for bodily perfection that is driven by the imitation of public figures and the influence of influencers on social networks, which establishes aesthetic procedures as a “status symbol.”
This “status” is manifested even in the criminal world, where aesthetic procedures are used to show off purchasing power and, in some cases, as a strategy to evade justice. Ana Lilia Pérez documents how this practice was popularized by Colombian groups, who not only underwent surgeries out of vanity, but also performed “face changes so that they would not be recognized,” and even the practice of filing or removing fingerprints to acquire other identities.
In this context, he explained, the degree of “tuning” of the drug trafficker’s partner has become a “status symbol” that reflects the investment and power of the man.
Finally, the journalist highlighted the mental health background in the obsession with body modifications, particularly in disorders such as body dysmorphia. Those who suffer from it do not seek psychological or psychiatric care, but rather “collect aesthetic procedures, collect surgeries,” putting their health at risk and being detected, in some cases, “until they reach intensive care areas.”