Spot-On

A group of Italian pensioners were caught red-handed paying to touch attractive young women.

How much? Three euro for a pat on the butt, two to caress legs and five for a bra touch, if the Italian press is to be believed.

It happened in the Sicilian seaside town of Gela, where old men congregate in the city park. The same place where young Eastern European women, who look after kids and other old people, also hang out when they're not working.

Family members, concerned about an "over excited" aging relative, confided in a local doctor. The doctor tipped police, but alas, it's not illegal.

This should be outrageous. It's groping, it's old people, it's Molestation, for crying out loud.

But it's funny. Come on: Italians, everyone knows, are the biggest gropers on the planet.

Aren't they?

I once worked for a study abroad program in Florence and I can't tell you how many of the female students would ask me, in confidence and with palpable disappointment, why they hadn't been at least pinched.

That kind of obnoxious physicality is expected from Italian men, denounced yet somehow a given on the sexual landscape.

When Italy's high court ruled three years ago that a pat on the behind was sexual violence, it was decried as the end of an era, the twilight of Italian malehood, the latest "americanata," another bad import from America, land of teeth-clenching PCers.

While it's hard to condone what is essentially prostitution lite, my sympathy goes to the old gents who haven't yet resigned themselves to a life without sex.

Posted by Nicole Martinelli at 11:00 AM | Print this article