Giulietta è una zoccola[Juliet is a whore]
This insult has become a famous joke among football fans originating from a quarrel between supporters of Verona against those of Naples in the 1980s. 1 Verona supporters first attacked those of Naples with geographical racist insults (for instance, by wishing the volcano Vesuvius to erupt) and the aforementioned rebuttal moved the slur from racism to include sexism towards the Shakespearian character whose story unfolded in the Veneto city. 2 It is my argument that such verbal attacks on women in private and public spaces are not coincidental nor can they be dismissed as ‘banter’ (as widely justified in Italy and other parts of the world) but that they form part of a cultural gendered arrangement which has developed over the centuries. As with other sites which have been investigated in terms of gender , I consider Italy as a “fruitful epistemological site” (emphasis in the original, Sunderland 2004, p. 73), that is a physical space that can provide interesting and investigation-worth data. With the term ‘epistemological site’, Sunderland intended a much more limited space than the one I am proposing here, e.g. a Starbucks coffee-house, or a set of material data, e.g. texts about fatherhood; however, I believe this term to be a relevant one as a means of describing a more extended context, i.e. Italy, as a place which constantly provides fruitful data to investigate women and men. The pros of considering Italy as an epistemological site lie in the theoretical underpinning of the term, that is the relevance and the rationale of the data selected for this volume, as well as the discussion of expectations (that can be either met or not) of gender in such sites. From the perspective of the cons, seeing Italy as a site might risk disregarding the varieties of experiences of women and men in Italy, some more positive than others, with respect to a gender (im)balance. In order to tackle the cons, I discuss and explain the contradictions of Italy in relation to practices that aim to disrupt the common understanding of gender (imbalance between women and men) as well as those that continue to promote the divide between gender groups. I cannot do so without first presenting Italy and justifying to the reader why it is a fruitful epistemological site.
Why Italy: The Cult of Beauty
Gundle (2000, 2007) argues that from mediaeval times until the present, poetry as well as the arts have focussed on the physical beauty of women in Italy. 3
This cult developed to reach all historical and art-related periods starting from Dante, for instance, in the work of the poet Carducci and the writer (and controversial figure) D’Annunzio who dedicated his artefacts to the Queen at the time, Margherita. Gundle (2007, p. xix) recognised that: “[w]hile feminine beauty occupies some place in national identities in every country, the very long-standing high cultural tradition of preoccupation with it provides a bolster and a platform that are unique in the peninsula”. 4 History has left a legacy about women which is difficult to abandon. Gundle (2007) suggests that Italy itself ended up being represented as a woman, in order to boast men’s devotion to the country (specifically during the World War II), being “at turns a protective mother, an erotic ideal, a fragile maiden and an amazon. Each of these grabbed the emotions and desires and encouraged men in a passionate attachment to Italy” (2007, p. xx). Amongst these roles, the mother is certainly one which has historical roots, as further discussed by Gundle (2007); the mother figure was portrayed as having large breasts with the aim of reproducing the attachment of the son to her and instilling in the culture both a beauty standard for, and emphasising the biological role of women. While the physical imaginary changed throughout the twentieth century, with American beauty imposing its models (a skinnier woman with blonde hair), the perception of women as representing the domestic sphere never really changed (this is also discussed in Chapter 5 on femminicidio ). Advocating Gundle (2007), I suggest that this had an impact on the participation of women in the public sphere (see Chapter 4 on how language is related in this respect) and reflects “a profound sexual asymmetry in Italian society” (Gundle 2007, p. 266). In his chronicle, Gundle (2000, 2007) reaches more modern times, collocating Miss Italia, the show that elects the most beautiful young woman, as one of the ways in which the cult of beauty is perpetuated in Italy. Initially called La Bella Italiana (the beautiful Italian), the context was based on an idealised beauty that also embedded virtues proper to the domestic sphere, that is “the jurors were advised not to evaluate beauty as such […] but to choose the ideal fiancée for their son” (Gundle 2007, p. 118). In other words, Miss Italia had to be beautiful but also attached to family values, the two main traits attributed to women in the country throughout its history. The show was aired by state TV from 1979 (previously it was aired on radio) until 2012 when the show received much criticism, mainly from the former Speaker of the Camera dei Deputati (one of the two chambers of the Italian parliament ), for being sexist and solely relying on the physical and stereotyped appearance of women. It was moved to a corporate TV channel where it is currently shown every September. Italian national and commercial TV airs not only Miss Italia, but also plenty of other programmes where women’s bodies are exposed, where female roles are limited to silent figures at the side of the main (male) hosts, particularly in game and comedy shows. An Italian-Hollywood director—Gabriele Muccino—included young women’s pursuit of such roles in one of his movies (Ricordati di me 2007, Remember me, My love). This shows how entrenched in Italian culture it is the mostly passive and beauty-based roles in the media relegated to women. In relation to ideas about Italian women and, more specifically women on TV, Hipkins (2011) confidently states that “women on Italian television are objectified more frequently than on other European television networks” (2011, p. 413) and further suggests “[an]equation between female beauty, stupidity and sexual incontinence” (2011, p. 413). This obsession for beauty and its public exposition means that “the increasing presence of women is concentrated in visibility rather than in power” (Gundle 2007, p. 266). These elements are cardinal to understanding the position and the attempted re-positioning of women in Italy and is the object of my attention later in this volume where I discuss how women in politics are represented. I suspect that the country for the most-part, unconsciously perpetuates this mainstream view of women. Feminist pockets of resistance are emerging with an aim to change these perceptions, the most famous being the documentary by L...