WOMEN’S BODY
di Lorella Zanardo, tr.it di Serena Povia

(Link al documentario italiano “Il corpo delle donne”di cui il testo che segue è la traduzione trascrittadel solo commento fuori campo)

I have worked so hard and I am exhausted. I could never have imagined such a level of exhaustion and boredom. Now I know that images aren’t just plain images, they are means of communication, memory, knowledge, education… I would certainly never have imagined that televised images are such a faithful mirror for certain behaviour. I have tried to look inside that mirror to see who we are and what we can change if we don’t like ourselves. I have learned that sometimes mirrors can be used to conceal rather than reveal.

I remember when Marco told me that TV has an incredible power. While discussing reality, it can dissimulate. The TV now steals, blights, ruins the landscape of everybody’s conscience. Despoils us of our roots and origins.

Faces become masks after plastic surgery. Bodies are inflated to ridiculous proportions, like those of circus freaks. They give us a fake and surreal image of women. I’m sure that you can only bear to watch TVonce you realise what a circus it really is. What are we? What do we want? Why aren’t all Italian women out in the streets protesting against this way of their being represented on TV?

Real women’s bodies have been hidden away; instead we are presented with an obsessively vulgar image made of silicone lips, thighs, breasts: the truth is removed and replaced with a mask.

What is feminine in these images of women? We don’t encounter, except in rare cases on less mainstream TV stations, a different type of woman, a new identity, original and genuine, who isn’t simply there to accompany the man. The presence of womenon television is more a question of quantity than quality.

The woman portrayed seems to go along with men’s every desire and gives upany possibility of being an equal “other”.

She is reduced and reduced herself to be just a sexual object, fighting the passing of time and undergoing all sort of freak transformations, being forced to stay withina frame, mute, or to present TV shows than require no competence whatsoever.

It seems as if women are incapable of looking at themselves in the mirror, and can’t accept themselves as they are with their own faces.

Being authentic probably constitutes one of the fundamental human rights. However in order to be authentic you need to recognize your own desires and most profound needs. In my opinion, the real problem is the fact that women lost the capacity to understand their real needs, and therefore how could they possibly be themselves?

(6:18) We are so used to seeing ourselves through the eyes of men that we can no longer decide what we want and what makes us happy. I mean that we look at each other’s breast, lips, wrinkles as if we were men… This current model of beautydoesn’t fit us and it is somewhat strange that advertising uses image that reflect men’s sexual taste in order to sell product to women.

I believe that without a pressure to be “beautiful”, following a criterion that is not our own, we would appreciate ourselves more for what we really are. And if it’s true that appearances speak louder than actual words, what are these bodies telling us?

On the TV show “Bagaglino”, a few weeks after the demeaning “Vallettopoli” scandal, Elisabetta Gregoraci confirmed her humiliating role in the “sexual favours for TV jobs” scandal by singing “la rumba lecca lecca” (the lollipop rumba). And did we need a sadistic showgirl? Was there really need for such a darkly erotic figure rather than a brighter one? This image was there to capture the attention of men, just as they got home from work to stop them from changing channels. Why did it happen? Maybe this is how the system works, and these are our role models. This is how it works in fashion, politics, sports, pop music, even medicine. As a woman, becoming part of this group, gives you power.

As mentioned previously, emancipated women nowadays have to present themselves in public always as desirable object, even in a strictly professional context, even when the woman on the screen are adults who might actually have something to say.

Since the only sign of desirability we are able to recognize is an explicit reference to sex, we have changed our entire imagery into that a strip club. These images are recorded by positioning the camera before the shot as in pornographic films starting with the breast, the pubic area, thighs, exactly like a porn movie. But we are actually watching a public broadcasting channel.

Cristina, the latest star of Big Brother, is a daughter of feminism, a feminism she reinterprets in her own way: once,everythinghad to be fought for. Today, usingmethods a feminist would never have used, a woman has become something else. A woman of many contradictions. She represents all the symbols of femininity and yet she has adapted them to the market, but her personality is not submissive, because if you want to be successful nowadays you have to have male attributes, balls.

Cristina’s tone is similar to the chirping voice of Milo or Biagini, Italian showgirls from a past generation. But there were women not long ago who got back their adult voices.

Strangely enough, most calendar girls are not different from the diligent, scholarly, ambitious and determined girls mentioned in school statistics. Most of the time they were good pupils adored by their teachers. Sara Tommasi, “paperetta” (little duckling themed showgirl role), “schedina” (cheerleader themed role) and “Celebrity Island”reality show participant, had declared «after 4 years of studying at the Bocconi University, I became a manager in a large company. Today I am the product, a product I sell in the show business market».

Of the 45 facial muscles, besides those you need to chew, kiss, smell, breathe, all the others help you show your emotions. The more complex your character - and by character I mean your very essence - the more your facial expressions will be distinguishable from those of other individuals. What are these faces hiding? Why can women no longer appear on TV showing their real faces? Why isn't there a single adult woman who can show her face? Why this humiliation? Should we be embarrassed to show our faces? We have to hide our wrinkles: is the passing of time something to be ashamed of? This is a violence inflicted only upon women not men. Anna Magnani used to say to her make-up artist before a scene, as he was about to cover her wrinkles “Leave them alone, don't you dare hide a single one of them, it has taken me a lifetime to get them...”

By hiding our faces, are we giving up our uniqueness, and therefore our soul? Our faces express our true nature. First of all, it's directly exposed, defenceless; it cannot hide its naked dignity. It is our face that starts and makes possible every exchange and it is at the base of all human relationships. Do the faces we are talking about allow to build relationships? Another person's face draws us in question, makes us responsible. The human face holds a message: total vulnerability. This is why we hide it, change it, embellish it or modify it even with surgery. This explains why it is so hard to accept one's own face: it's like looking at an image of total vulnerability. How can we remain vulnerable, and remain ourselves, in a world where you can only win if you are thoroughly invulnerable?

This is a tough choice for women! Invincible amongst the winners or vulnerable and forgotten? Vulnerability, however is the most fascinating aspect of a face. Pier Paolo Pasolini understood from the start that TV was destroying the poetry of the human face. Pasolini had a deeper understanding of the reality of the human face as a point of contact where all unspeakable energies explode thorough an expression, something asymmetrical, individual, impure, complex, in short the contrary of typical. What is happening to women's faces? And tothe femininity expressed thorough its uniqueness?

On growing old, I show my character. Where for character I mean everything I have lived through and which has shaped my face, it's a face I have made myself with my habits, friendships, my own peculiar way of being, my ambitions, the love I have experienced and the love I have dreamed about, the children I have given birth to. “Honour the face of the old” as written in the Book of Leviticus (19,32).

It's a citizen's duty to show his face in public, without hiding it, as it is possible nowadays with plastic surgery.

Considerable damage is done through the lack of visibility of older faces: only faces without hair, with heavy make-up, screen-ready for selling or politics are shown to the public.

There are many women today, who have reached a certain amount of fame and power on TV; most of them are mature women, with a personal history: but what truths do their faces tell us?

What kind of role model are they for younger women, with whom they seem to be in competitionaesthetically? Do they impose upon those women the diktat of a perfect body?

The few images we do see of adult and non artificial-women are ferocious: hyenas who rage against and attack younger women, with whom they cannot compete aesthetically because of the agedifference and leads to the humiliation of the younger women by the older ones.

What happens when faces can no longer show their vulnerability? Where can we find the reason for pietas, the need for sincerity, the need for answers which form the basis of social cohesion?

So let’s have not a face-lift, but - as the philosopher Galimberti said – a lift on our ideas. We'll realise that a lot of ideas which came to mind watching the spectacle of beauty youth, sex and physical perfection, really only help us hide from ourselves and from others our real personality. A part of ourselves we had never really considered, because from an early age we were taught that appearingwas more important than being. Thus risking living a life in which we are complete strangers to ourselves and to those around us.

At primary school, my teacher taught me to draw grechine (pretty little borders) to separate one piece of work from another on the same page. These were decorative figures that would frame my work. Television teems with women acting as decorative frames, some of them have an erotic attitude, others are just pretty decorations, young and fresh faces who are there during a commercial break, or serve as furniture, exactly like pretty little border.

Loredana Lipperini, the author of “Still on the side of little girs”, reminds us how hidden under the bras and inflated lips, which even the smartest woman, unlike the men present, feels obliged to show off, there is a misinterpreted concept that once you consider you have freedyourself from old stereotypes you can use them for your own amusement. However playing with symbols and stereotypes requires a thorough knowledge of the rules of the game or you might get burnt.

Can a woman crawl under a Perspex table, pretend that she is the legs of the table, spend a long time under it pretending that it’s only a silly game? Can this be done without it leaving a scar somewhere in her body? And what should people who are watching the programme feel about it? On TV there is a woman and a man is using her as the legs of a table… When the programme was first shown some people but the authors of the program and the presenter Mammuccari said that “the girl is a living sculpture, she is in a cage and even has breathing holes”.

An infinite number of HUMILIATED women.

Many female adult presenters on Italian TV are as powerful as men, and somehow they feel the urge to act like men by demeaning the younger girls, who have less power.

For years I believed that television had nothing to do with me or with millions of women who work hard, have goals in life. But these images keep appearing on TV and entering our homes, feeding fantasies, reaching the eyes of our children and invading the world. The survival of our identity is at stake. Why don't we do something about it? Why can't we show our own truth? Why do we keep accepting this constant humiliation? Why don't we fight to protect our rights? What are we afraid of?

Trascritto da Massimo Velon e Eduardo Bucci (2D, a.s. 2009-2010)
Edited by MG Tundo in 2010

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