Ignore the Boobs on that Billboard!!
One day I was on the bus and I counted how many times I
saw a semi-nude woman advertising something from my house to central station.
There were 17 different women in all, and that is not counting when the same
woman was repeated (street advertising here is often posters glued next to each
other like pixels on a much bigger billboard-sized advertising space). This was
a fifteen-minute ride including all stops and just two major streets. A little
mind-blowing perhaps? Not so much if you lived here fifteen years ago, which
was when I carried out this experiment.
Actually, there was something therapeutic about this
exercise. It was the first time since I had arrived that I was able to look at
these women without getting pissed off or taking it personally. I was able to
see the women on the posters as objects. And isn’t that the point of this kind
of advertising? I had officially become the Male
Viewer.
At about the same time, my husband and I took a ride to
Udine and I was surprised to see a billboard with two naked boobies on it (and
that’s all) with some writing underneath. As I got closer, I noticed it was a
mattress company.
“What the hell do boobs have to do with mattresses?” I
ask him, curious to understand the machinations of the Italian male thinking
process.
He wrinkles up his brow in a way that made it clear he
was not used to making connections between female body parts and what they are
advertising (which was exactly my point). Then he comes up with a doozy.
“Boobs. Soft pillows! Pillows and mattresses!”
Problem solved. He felt smug and unflustered by the whole
thing. I still felt pissed off.
So, two lessons from that first summer living in Italy.
1) Sexism is pervasive, and nobody seems to care.
2) We Americans take a lot of shit personally.
I could elaborate on point one all day, of course,
because that’s what I do, but I want to take a moment to talk about point two
because it is something I feel we can work on as a people.
Jumping back into the mind of the Italian male (or at
least the mind of the one I know best, my husband’s) I can tell you exactly why
he was unflustered by the booby campaign. The first, most obvious, reason is
point number one above. That is the easy answer that even an international
audience can agree on. “Those Italians, so sexist!!” And they wouldn’t be
wrong.
The second reason is a little more subtle and it is this:
Boobs are not a big deal here and I mean that for women and men. In Trieste for
example, the important thing is the tan line (or not having one) not the boobs.
Boobs are considered part of a woman’s body, thrilling to look at, no doubt,
but not something to gawk at as there is no pressure here to hide what is
perfectly naturally a part of YOU.
To understand this one, let’s do a little role reversal
and talk about the warnings that Italians give their friends when they hear
they are going to America in the summer.
“Be careful in America when you go to the beach: even
little babies must wear a bikini top!! No boobies yet and the Americans are
worried about indecent exposure!!”
This is usually followed by the story about the friend of
a friend who got a good “speaking to” by “the police” and a warning to “cover
up” their little one-- the confusion and shame that ensued.
See, little girls’ swimming suits come in two types here:
a classic full one-piece affair that you would use for, say, swimming class,
and the other type of one-piece, which is a bikini bottom. There is no top
because it is considered strange to put a bra-like contraption on anyone who is
pre-pubescent. Looks like you’re trying to dress a child like a woman, and
that, if you think about it, is a little strange.
Kids in Italy wear practically the same style of swimming
suit until they are teenagers. While the girls have the bikini bottom, boys and
men wear what Americans call “Speedos” for going in the water. They are
considered “more hygienic,” and faster to dry once you get out. I would add
that it is the closest thing to running around in your underwear that you can
get, and don’t all dudes love hanging out in their underwear? They may throw on
a pair of longer swimming trunks or shorts for hanging out and playing with
friends and kicking a ball around in between swims.
Nobody is scandalized or titillated by the presence of a
scantily clad person of the opposite sex. The training starts at an early age.
Take locker rooms. They are mixed until middle school (the rule is kids go in the changing room of the gender of the parent who is helping out. While with daddy, go in the boys' locker room, while with grandma or mom, go with the women).
Kids see each other naked (locker room at pool, for instance, or
at the beach in the summer) or in their
skivvies all the time. No body shaming. No embarrassment. Even as adults, there
are plenty of times when a good swim (which takes precedence over nearly
anything else in the world, including Pride) requires changing in the presence
of other adults. The Triestini are experts in the art of towel manipulation and
have Houdini-like precision when it comes to escaping one type of clothes and
throwing on another.
Thus, when in Italy, don’t take it personally. After that
bus ride with the naked ladies, I realized that it wasn’t just me. There is a
system in place here that I cannot change on my own overnight. Taking systemic
misogyny personally was not going to take me very far. Instead, I decided to
see those posters in a more neutral way and work on something I can have some
influence over. First, my relationship with my own body (a work in progress, I
can tell you, even after fifteen years of trying) and… my husband.
It starts here with this little question.
“Don’t you men get tired of being marketed to as if you
were cavemen?!”
Now, I can’t take credit for progress that has
been made in the meantime (and there has been some), but I can tell you that fifteen years later
advertising has changed. Apparently I am not the only one to
desensitize from the in-your-face booby caveman advertising because you just
don’t see it so much anymore (in the streets, that is. TV is a completely different beast, so I just don't watch it).
Of course, sexism is alive and well in Italy and will not be going away anytime soon (in case you are a male chauvinist and worried about this), but other things have changed. For one thing, I feel like women (especially women with some work experience, but also young women who are just starting out) are no longer waiting for the contratto a tempo determato to fall in their lap (because it won't). Instead they are opening their own one-person-show businesses, negotiating their salaries and timetables based on their personal needs.
If women can work on their own terms, they can also shop in places that see them as whole people. Perhaps the advertisers have woken up to this reality.
Of course, sexism is alive and well in Italy and will not be going away anytime soon (in case you are a male chauvinist and worried about this), but other things have changed. For one thing, I feel like women (especially women with some work experience, but also young women who are just starting out) are no longer waiting for the contratto a tempo determato to fall in their lap (because it won't). Instead they are opening their own one-person-show businesses, negotiating their salaries and timetables based on their personal needs.
If women can work on their own terms, they can also shop in places that see them as whole people. Perhaps the advertisers have woken up to this reality.
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