Il corpo delle donne (Women's Bodies) subtitled in English, created by Lorella Zanardo is a disturbing look into Italian TV and how women are depicted on it. Watch it. It's well worth it.
The Italian media only exacerbate this bleak reality by presenting a picture of women that is incomprehensible to the rest of Europe. Private TV channels have started to broadcast images of women who are typically lightly dressed and silent beauties serving as decoration while older, fully dressed men are running the show. (It is worth noting here that Mr. Berlusconi owns the leading private television networks.)
The impact of years of brainwashing is plain to see: recent research demonstrated that the most popular ambition among female teenagers is to become a velina (basically a showgirl). Young women and girls are consistently taught that their bodies, rather than their abilities and their knowledge, are the key to success. At the same time, the sexism portrayed on TV reinforces chauvinistic ideas among the culturally weakest parts of the population. Researchers who study female body objectification need only look to Italy to witness the sad consequences of this phenomenon.
The portrayals of women bring to mind darker moments in our country’s past. During Italy’s Fascist era in the first half of the 20th century, there was no shortage of derogatory images of people from its colonies in Africa. Women were portrayed as sexual objects and the men as barbarian enemies. In recent years, as immigrants have been flocking to Italy, these kinds of crude stereotypes have been coming back. To give just one example: The leader of the Northern League Party, Umberto Bossi, has called immigrants “bingo bongos.” These attitudes in part reflect the feelings of economic and social insecurity that have only deepened over the past decade or so. The responses to this, namely sexism and racism, are just two sides of the same coin.
