Women Take On Sexist Image in Italian Media

Ah, the glories of sexual liberation:

On television, the Italian penchant for adorning soundstages with skimpily clad, surgically enhanced showgirls has radically metastasized, spilling over from game shows to all forms of entertainment, including the nightly news . . . .

The notion of women as sexual objects exists throughout the world, “but here it is prevalent,” said Lorella Zanardo, a management consultant on diversity and equal opportunity, adding, “here only this model passes on television.” She said she felt compelled to film “Il Corpo delle Donne” (Women’s Body), an arresting documentary about women on Italian television, “because I was ashamed of the image of us that is broadcast.” . . .

“It was a terrible experience because I didn’t think I’d see so much humiliation,” Ms. Zanardo said. When they aren’t decorously poised like mute stage props or stumbling through chorus line choreographies, women have been used as table legs, thrust into showers for the designer equivalent of the wet T-shirt contest, or strung up like slabs of cured ham in a meat locker. “If they put a black man in the same situation, people would take to the streets to protest, but with women there isn’t the same involvement. And we are allowing this to happen.” . . .

Other media tend to hammer home the same theme. Magazines for teenage girls, for example, regularly query their readers on their showgirl skills rather than their intellect. “If this is proposed as the winning model, it means that there is a huge void there,” said Ms. Sivieri Tagliabue. “And it leads to a society that has lost values central to humanity.”

A society with “lost values” that are “central to humanity.” Hmm. Now where could they could have gone ?