come ci vedono all'estero

[Arthur]

da repubblica

La terra che ha dimenticato il femminismo", sovraimpresso sul noto cartellone pubblicitario di Telecom Italia in cui Elisabetta Canalis, seduta a gambe incrociate con un telefonino in mano, piega il busto in avanti, in una posizione non proprio comodissima, rivelando una generosa scollatura. E' la copertina dell'inserto patinato del Financial Times di ieri, che in un articolo di quattro pagine denuncia severamente il trattamento riservato alle donne nel nostro paese: l'uso di vallette seminude in ogni genere di programma televisivo, gli spot pubblicitari dominati da allusioni sessuali, il prevalere della donna come oggetto, destinata a stuzzicare "i genitali dell'uomo, anziché il cervello".
Non solo: secondo l'autore del servizio, Adrian Michaels, corrispondente da Milano dell'autorevole quotidiano finanziario, potrebbe esserci un legame fra l'onnipresenza di maggiorate in abiti discinti sui nostri mezzi di comunicazione e la scarsità di donne ai vertici della politica, del business, delle professioni in Italia.


altro che quote rosa. la risposta sarà canalis candidata al parlamento e il pubblico dei telesudditi voterà in massa. un bell'applauso.

[brunik]

e noi risponderemo alle pesanti insinuazioni candidando la Brambilla nel caso Silvio crollasse dal punto di vista fisico.

[Airbus]

ecco l'articolo


Passengers arriving at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport recently found themselves confronted by a large-breasted woman, cleavage exposed almost to the bottom of her sternum. From her billboard perch, she was attempting to interest travellers in the business communications products of Telecom Italia.

Those flying in from many other countries, and particularly from the UK or the US, would probably have found this fleshy advertising style archaic. These days, a naked woman lying unironically on the top of a car is about as cool in advertising as a rugged cowboy on the range, cigarette dangling from lip. Long-legged variety-show lovelies or immaculately unattired game-show hostesses are rare, if not completely absent from television. But in Italy, they are an everyday occurrence.


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If you are home before the 8pm news on Rai Uno, Italy’s main television station, you will discover it is preceded by a quiz show called L’Eredita (“The Inheritance”). In the middle of the programme, four ritzy women interrupt the competition to dance. “My jewels!” the male host exclaims. The dancing has no connection to the rest of the show; Rai Uno explains on its website that the “girls… with their presence and beauty, cheer up everyone watching, particularly men”.

Since moving to Milan from New York three years ago, I have been wondering why no one seems to care about the incongruous use of women in advertising and on television, and what that says about Italian society. Do Italians, particularly Italian women, really think it acceptable to sell primetime quiz shows on terrestrial television by trying to stir the male genitalia instead of viewers’ brains? Or are they instead happy with life as it is – beautiful, flirtatious and with a supply of great shoes?

It is not just domestic companies or television stations that seem stuck in old ways of selling products to Italians. Earlier this year, advertising hoardings were plastered with posters for 3 Italia, a telecoms company owned by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa. Three women wore dresses so skimpy they revealed not just classic cleavage but also, through large holes in the dresses’ midriffs, the more daring undercurve of the bosom. 3 Italia was advertising a new billing plan.

Of course marketing campaigns in other countries use the female body. But the difference, says Sergio Rodriguez, group creative director at Leo Burnett Italy, the ad agency, “is that in Italy when you don’t have to use women, you use women”.

In the UK or US, such tactics might inspire anything from headshaking and irritation to clear outrage. When a US campaign for Miller, the brewer, appeared in 2003 with two women fighting and taking off their clothes, the company received hundreds of complaints. In Italy, no one says anything.

Caterina Preti, a 19-year-old Italian student who moved from Milan to London in September, says: “I didn’t really notice how bad it was until I moved. What I’ve noticed here is that you don’t see girls in bikinis or naked women on television, always smiling. People in Italy are so used to it, there is no push to try to change it.”

Emma Bonino – minister for International Trade and European Affairs in Romano Prodi’s Italian coalition government, and a former European Union commissioner – is a notable exception. Bonino, one of the leaders of Rosa nel Pugno (Rose in the Fist), the political party, recently organised an international conference in Italy to discuss issues facing women entrepreneurs. She says: “Most people, even women, accept the situation in some way for what it is.” Of dancing girls and other phenomena, she says: “Most of the time it makes me laugh, it seems so ridiculous.” But she says it strengthens her conviction to fight for change.

It was women’s rights groups that complained loudly about the Miller adverts in the US. Italian feminism, say Bonino and Graziella Parati, head of comparative literature at Dartmouth College in the US, used to be strong, but not any more.

“Italy has had a long history of feminism,” says Parati, who has studied Italian culture and written books on gender issues. “It is different from Anglo-American feminism [and] based not on a search for equality but rather on putting an emphasis on difference… Joining a man’s world may be practical, but does not solve the fact that you end up trapped in a system that can contain and invalidate the difference that women’s otherness embodies.”

Bonino points out that Italian feminism was vigorous in the 1970s when abortion and divorce were legalised – “even with the church next door and the Pope on television every day”. In 1976, she says, 11 per cent of members of parliament were women, the same as today. “Most of my colleagues fell asleep in some way… the women’s movement never pressed for structural reforms and there is still nothing on the agenda. When women fell asleep they followed the cultural mainstream.”

The problem is evident in both parliament and the boardroom. Italy came above only Cyprus, Egypt and South Korea in 48 countries surveyed by the International Labour Organisation for female share of legislators, senior officials and managers. In the largest Italian companies, women represent about two per cent of board directors, according to the European Professional Women’s Network, compared with 23 per cent for Scandinavia and Finland and 15 per cent in the US.

Maybe nudity, chauvinism and a lack of professional attainment are different parts of the same enduring Italian image: the mamma rules the house but is confined to the kitchen, rolling out ravioli while her daughters, with little expected of them professionally, seek success through fame and beauty.

Preti, the student who recently moved to London, worries about a lack of variety in role models for Italian teenagers. She says: “Young girls envy showgirls, they link beauty with success… Many young women still have the example of their mothers who don’t work.” In the UK, meanwhile: “Young girls are much more determined, they are career-minded. They’re killing each other, they have dreams.”

But Laura Frati Gucci, the head of Aidda, the Italian association of top women managers and entrepreneurs, points out that successful women are rare enough in other countries too. There seems often to be surprise at the mere existence of Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and Segolene Royal, the runner up in France’s recent presidential elections. “Everyone looks at Merkel and Royal as if they are monkeys,” Frati Gucci says.

Women in Italy, she believes, are held back not by chauvinism but by rules and customs that inhibit their participation in work. Mothers complain of a lack of nurseries and kindergartens. Schools for older pupils finish at lunch time. The children have to be collected, they have to be fed, they have to be taken to afternoon activities. “A woman will never earn as much as she will pay a babysitter,” Frati Gucci says.

Mario Draghi, the governor of the Bank of Italy, highlighted structural work problems in a recent speech. “Italy stands out from many other European countries in the fact that fewer women return to work after maternity,” he said. ”Better designed policies to support families would have… [the] effect of raising female employment rates.”

Part-time work is rare in Italy, let alone acceptable for senior professionals. One female judge told me: “I can’t imagine a professional working part-time [and], although a woman can do whatever she wants, she also has to be the mother.” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that part-time workers account for just 15 per cent of the employed in Italy compared with Germany’s 21 per cent, 23 per cent in the UK and 36 per cent in the Netherlands.

It quickly became clear when my wife and I arrived from the US that there are cultural issues for women that go beyond school hours and acceptance of part-time work. A household functions with difficulty in Italy if all its adults have full-time jobs, and it is invariably the women who make sacrifices to ease the strain.

In the US you can buy milk and bread at any time, and in dozens of places. But Italians trying to shop on Monday mornings, or Thursday afternoons, or Sundays, or evenings, or lunch times, or early mornings, can be disappointed. Most banks are closed at lunch times and Saturdays. A supermarket will advertise on lampposts when it is going to be open on a Sunday, and then shut the Sunday after. And pity the parent – me, in this instance – pounding the streets at 7pm on a Sunday trying to find milk for his baby before bedtime. One pharmacy was open, but didn’t sell milk. There are no convenience stores. In the end I bought some long-life milk in a store where the staff were not speaking Italian.

One female criminal lawyer (who prefers not to be named) argues that the lack of recognition of a modern woman’s needs is even visible in hospital obstetrics units. There are not many hospitals in the Milan area where women giving birth can have an epidural, and some units prefer to offer no pain relief at all. Hospitals emphasise that birth should be a natural process, though the lack of choice that entails can leave foreigners imagining they have stepped back in time.

Pain and suffering, motherhood and pasta, shuttered banks. It is easy to see how they could be linked to a lack of senior workplace representation. There also seems to be a simple link between the dominance of men at work and the portrayal of women in advertising. Daniela Barrera, planning and research director at Leo Burnett Italy, used to work in the UK. She says: “Half our clients in senior positions in the UK were women. Most are men in Italy.”

Male clients of advertising agencies tend, she believes, to ask for campaigns in which their products are equated with a superficial, unsophisticated form of beauty. Her colleague Rodriguez says: “A man thinks of his brand as a woman.” Barrera jokes: “If you have no idea [for a campaign], you can use a pair of tits, a baby or a puppy.” If that approach did not work with the public, there would be complaints. But there are none, the advertising executives say.

With few women in parliament, one source of lobbying for reforms that would encourage women to work is absent. Bonino says: “Because we are less vocal and determined, we do not have structural reforms in areas such as schools and services.”

Women certainly seemed to be silent while Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial television stations rose to the fore in the 1980s. Berlusconi, the former prime minister and Italy’s richest man, found success with a programming formula that included liberal use of the female form. Italy’s state-controlled channels soon dropped their previous aversion to exposed flesh in the battle for ratings.

“Television is still in the hands of men,” says Parati at Dartmouth College. “This recreates the illusion of how women can be subjugated and is reassuring… Berlusconi has not created the situation but he has made it bigger.”

Striscia La Notizia (“The News Slithers”), a satirical news programme, is one of the most popular shows on Canale 5, one of Berlusconi’s channels. It goes out six nights a week at 8.30pm presented by two men but regularly interrupted by two gyrating and minimally dressed women. Competitions to replace the two female dancers are deemed newsworthy in their own right.

The show is just one example of the astonishingly restricted use of women on Italian television. A study last year of almost 600 television shows on the largest channels by Censis, an Italian research institute, showed that women mostly appeared as actors, singers and models. “The most common image seemed to be that of women in light entertainment,” Censis said. When women were present as experts, they tended to be talking about astrology or handicrafts. Professional or political women were extremely rare.

“Beautiful, glossy and most importantly young,” said Censis. “The images of women are split between light entertainment and those of violence in bad news stories. There is a distortion compared with the real female world: old women are invisible, the socioeconomic status of women [portrayed] is middle-upper class … meanwhile there are never any disabled women.”

Often, little seems to have changed in Italy in the more than 50 years since Luchino Visconti made Bellissima, a funny and distressing satire on a Roman mother’s starry ambitions for her tiny daughter. In the film, rent and household savings are jeopardised while little Maria is carted around hairdressers, dressmakers and ballet classes in an effort to stand out at a famous director’s casting call. Her mother is meanwhile trying to bribe shady characters on mopeds supposedly connected to the studio, with predictably gloomy consequences.

But something is missing from this portrayal of Italy as backward and chauvinist. You could argue that Italians are not interested in “catching up” with other countries. Leo Burnett’s Barrera says: “Italy is behind in the role of women in society but it’s superficial to say that advertising reflects that … We have a different level of correctness: nudity is also a matter of women wanting to portray their beauty. Female politicians appear on television in short skirts because they want to show that they are well-preserved and beautiful.”

The female judge estimates that 10 per cent of women in her profession dress sexily because it is a weapon and “because they like it”. Sergio Rodriguez, Barrera’s colleague, says: “It’s not a question of being behind. Italian men and women may never be like British men and women … it’s about aesthetics, it’s a choice.”

Ilaria D’Amico is one of the best-known sports presenters in Italy. Every week she presents Sky Italia’s main football coverage, and no one could argue that D’Amico does not know her football. But she stands throughout the broadcast, invariably in a black cocktail dress, discussing the match with former players and pundits – all men, all in suits, and all seated.

Parati says: “Women have bought into male paradigms of what femininity is, so they pay particular attention to their appearance; but they have also grown up in a country full of art and beauty, and their attention to aesthetics in general can come from that.” Bonino concedes: “My feeling is that the women’s rights movement does not exist any more.”

And yet occasionally there are howls of pain. Earlier this year Veronica Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi’s wife of almost three decades, tired of her husband’s reported boorish behaviour. After hearing that he had flirted with other women at a gala media dinner, Veronica wrote a letter to La Repubblica, one of Italy’s biggest newspapers and a critic of Berlusconi’s rightwing politics. His conduct was an affront to “my dignity as a woman”, she wrote, before demanding a public apology. “Today for my female children, already adults,” she continued, “the example of a woman capable of defending her dignity … takes on significant importance.” She hoped her outcry would remind her son, Luigi, “never to forget to keep among his fundamental values a respect for women”. The letter was printed on the front page of the paper.

Plenty of people dismissed the episode as a stunt. In the never-ending circus of Berlusconi family life, the abashed husband responded publicly on the same day: “Dear Veronica, here are my apologies to you,” he wrote, going on floridly to revere the strength of their bond. He ended with “big kiss. Silvio”.

But for Preti, the student in London, Veronica Berlusconi’s indignant letter signified a stirring of change. “I believe that her bravery could be used as a springboard for Italian women… It is an example of a woman who does not want to accept her inferior status.”

Still, it is hard to see much real change looming in a country famous for its fashion and where there is so much eroticism on display that only the foreigners notice. The current Striscia La Notizia dancers, Melissa Satta and Thais Souza Wiggers, appeared this year in adverts in Milan’s main Centrale station wearing bras that pushed up, through unbuttoned shirts, their already ample breasts. It would be hard, and probably futile, to advertise underwear in any other way. But in this instance they were selling luggage.

Adrian Michaels is the FT’s Milan correspondent





la cosa assurda è CHE in italia nessuno dice niente....ad esempio sul fatto che i negbozi sono chiusi ad un sacco di ore anche nelle città più caotiche e affollate. cmq ripeto è ciò che si merita l'italia, la gogna, la denigrazione perchè siamo scandalosamente diversi e ridicoli rispetto a qualsiasi altro paese civile al mondo.


in spagna ci sono molte tramsissioni simili all'italia, ad esempio "passaparola", ma non c'è ombra delle letterina ed èp una donna che conduce il programma.
le nuove generazioni parlano di essere mantenute e hanno come più grande apirazione quella di trovare il marito ricco che le mantenga per comprare begli abiti e non fare un cazzo.......queste sono le aspirazioni......insomma, trovare uno che ti dà i soldi per scopare.......e poi si dice che la prostituzione andrebbe bandita e cazzate varie...... quella è prostituzione

[MrBojangles]

e noi risponderemo alle pesanti insinuazioni candidando la Brambilla nel caso Silvio crollasse dal punto di vista fisico.

[SILVIA]"Perchè la donna roscia, il partito me l'ammoscia ... La donna roscia non la voglio nnnò!"[/SILVIA]

[Socrates (POL)]

da repubblica

La terra che ha dimenticato il femminismo", sovraimpresso sul noto cartellone pubblicitario di Telecom Italia in cui Elisabetta Canalis, seduta a gambe incrociate con un telefonino in mano, piega il busto in avanti, in una posizione non proprio comodissima, rivelando una generosa scollatura. E' la copertina dell'inserto patinato del Financial Times di ieri, che in un articolo di quattro pagine denuncia severamente il trattamento riservato alle donne nel nostro paese: l'uso di vallette seminude in ogni genere di programma televisivo, gli spot pubblicitari dominati da allusioni sessuali, il prevalere della donna come oggetto, destinata a stuzzicare "i genitali dell'uomo, anziché il cervello".
Non solo: secondo l'autore del servizio, Adrian Michaels, corrispondente da Milano dell'autorevole quotidiano finanziario, potrebbe esserci un legame fra l'onnipresenza di maggiorate in abiti discinti sui nostri mezzi di comunicazione e la scarsità di donne ai vertici della politica, del business, delle professioni in Italia.


altro che quote rosa. la risposta sarà canalis candidata al parlamento e il pubblico dei telesudditi voterà in massa. un bell'applauso.

L'italiano medio vuole questo purtroppo e le donne non reagiscono.

[azerty]

[silvia]"Perchè la donna roscia, il partito me l'ammoscia ... La donna roscia non la voglio nnnò!"[/silvia]

[bitt2000]

....poteva fare un articolo sulle zanzare novaresi invece, sarebbe stato più interessante!

Che vuol dire sto discorso? Questo tizio sa cos'è la comunicazione? sa come funziona la pubblicità? Se la Canalis è in pubblicità con le cosce e le tette di fuori è evidente che attira l'attenzione, no?
E' una cosa che avviene in tutto il mondo: la pornografia ha portato Pamela Anderson e Paris Hilton a guadagnare milioni. Le stesse cose avvengono anche da loro: le porcate che fanno con i loro reality show sono la stessa cosa. Interessano alla gente e quindi continuano a produrli.

Ma soprattutto: che cavolo di legame può esserci fra una donna che mostra le tette in una pubblicità e le quote rosa?
Credi davvero che gli italiani vadano a votare le tette? o le cosce della brambilla? non hai una bella considerazione dei tuoi concittadini!

discutere di questo invece ha un senso:
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/C...andidata.shtml

[Airbus]

bitt2000 in italia alle tipe manca solo il burqa e poi le differenze sono annullate

[Medsim]

Tralasciando le foto con cui Brunik si trastulla nelle sue squallide serate di solitudine, la polemica mi sembra piuttosto sterile dato che il "problema" oltre a non avere nulla di politico, di certo non è circoscritto all'Italia.

Le donne e la loro emancipazione è cambiata, è finito il periodo del femminismo sfegatato poi usato anche a fini politici dai soliti noti.

Le donne e la loro immagine è usata ad uso e consumo di molte persone e sicuramente le donne stesse non penso che detestiuno mettersi in mostra, basta fare un giro durante una qualsiasi giornata estiva per rendersene conto.

Una cosa è certa, se la Canalis dovesse candidarsi sono convinto che prenderà più voti di Capezzone

[azerty]

Comunque, nota a margine, una donna votata dalla destra a Palazzo Chigi la vedo dura.
Il machismo impera ancora (soprattutto) nel meridione e (soprattutto) nell'elettorato di destra (vorrei ricordare al famoso duello Prodi-Berlusconi come quest'ultimo disse che in FI candidavano poche donne perché le donne dovevano badare alla casa ed ai bambini... ), e casi come il froggio comunista eletto alla Presidenza della Regione sono frutto di condizioni eccezionali (rispettabilità e credibilità riconosciute da tutti, fiducia nel governo centrale ai minimi della storia repubblicana in un contesto da paese allo sfascio).