The twists and turns of Italian politics rival any nighttime soap: one minute you're Europe's first transgender parliamentarian, the next you're getting an extreme wax to prepare for a reality show.
That's the trajectory of Vladimir Luxuria, former Communist Refoundation representative, ousted from government -- along with the rest of the party -- and now preparing to star in September in Italy's version of Celebrity Survivor! (Called, un-catchily, "Isola dei Famosi" or Famous People's Island in Italian).
Apparently, this is what happens when remote control is the only power left. Back when Luxuria was elected in 2006, hopes were high that Italian politics might be taking a change for the better, in part because after a record five-year tenure, Silvio Berlusconi was out.
Now Berlusconi is back. The communists, for the first time in Italy's post-war history, are out of the government.
Luxuria has said that catching fish with her hands on a small Honduras isle won't be any more of a reality show than the televised arguments about just who gets to use the parliamentary little girl's room.
It is difficult to argue with her, especially since, as far as I know, her other newsmaking moments while in government mostly had to do with some depressing plastic surgery and not her tenure on the Culture, Science and Education commission.
Her party mates see her post-parliament choice a little differently. Politics never take a break in Italy, summer recess is partly spent in powerhouse pow-wows in vacation spots to choose or reconfirm leaders and refine strategies for the upcoming season.
The communists have their hammer and sickle knickers in a bit of a twist, understandably. Just as they were trying to figure out how to get back in power at the national congress in Tuscan spa spot Chianciano Terme, it "leaked out" that Luxuria was trading it all in for a sun, sand and videotape, plus the equivalent of about 300 years salary of the average proletariat.
There's a special hell for this kind of discussion, whether you believe in the Inferno or not. While they were squabbling over a new leader -- even the winning faction got just 40% of the votes -- news outlets were more interested in Luxuria's career change.
Alas, Italian politicians will have to come up with some other gimmick to keep citizens tuned in. And the Vintage Nipplegate scandal probably won't do it.
This month's Italian edition of fashion bible Vogue features black models on the cover. Pithily called "A Black Issue," in English, and it was hailed as a stereotype-breaking move much heralded in the international press before it came out.
I read the articles, then forgot all about the controversy until I biked past a kiosk here in Milan urging me to pick up each of the four different "collectible" covers.
There is something more than a little dishonest about this particular fashion statement. For the Italian market, where foreigners, of any color, make up just five percent of the population, it's more of a publicity ploy than anything else.
It is also more likely to sell here on the "exotic/novelty" ticket than it would in places where it would be more representative of the general population. As far as I know, there were no newsstand rushes to collect the issue in Italy.
Edgy-luscious photos by Steven Meisel - the cover on the photo story for the issue on Vogue Italia's site offers up a topless Naomi Campell -- certainly add to that impression.
The other three cover women of color are Jourdan Dunn, Liya Kebede and Sessilee Lopez. On all four covers, they wear decidedly conservative un-summerlike clothing, as if to exasperate the "timeless" and "collectible" quality of the shots.
No doubt, the fashionistas know their gimmicks: the issue reportedly sold record copies outside Italy, in the U.S. and Britain especially. If, after getting on the waiting lists, running around to every neighborhood Barnes & Noble, you managed to get your hands on one, let me know what you make of it.
My nagging doubt? Vogue Italia, as the name implies, is published in Italian only. So, to my mind, if people bought it just to see the pics, the hype was more important than the actual content. (Articles in the issue are all dedicated to black women, too).
Does one issue of a magazine -- a minor edition in a language most people can't read -- even chip the French manicure in the racism of the fashion industry or society at large?
I'm going to say no, just like I did to spray tans and gaucho pants.
Perhaps the real problem is that we're allowing the agenda to be set by a group of people who regularly aim to convince grown women to spend money on things like romper suits.
They set the barriers, they can break them -- or pretend to break them to sell a few copies -- and then move on to the next big thing.
Maybe they'll do a Fat Issue next.
Milan city officials are grappling with a mosque so overgrown that hundreds of Muslims kneel on sidewalks to pray. The solution is igniting a game of NIMBY hot-potato as neighborhoods and politicians move services from one spot to another.
Last Friday, the 'mobile mosque' was around the corner from my house. On my way to a lunchtime piadina, a young man on a bike stopped to ask politely in a heavy foreign accent: "Scusi, signora (argh) how do I get to Vigorelli stadium from here?"
A few seconds later, I remembered the city had given worshipers use for prayer services -- just for one week -- there. After lunch, I went to check it out. The last time I'd been to the stadium, a Fascist-era bike racing track, Fiat had sponsored a faux-ski run in it. The venue is never particularly busy, it's an odd size and not well served by public transport.
It's safe to say there was no welcome mat: the main entrance, facing a supermarket, was closed. Participants walking from the main entrance around to the back had to get past a political stand that proclaimed "The Right Is Here," then through a cluster of police in riot gear, journalists, frowning locals and a metal barrier festooned with red and white tape. A spray painted banner with the phrase: "OUR DIGNITY, YOUR SERENITY: A UNITED CITIZENRY ASKS FOR RESPECT" was the put up by the community.
Men, many of whom looked like they might have left off plastering Milanese penthouses to come, arrived a few at a time, heads down and walking quickly. The next day, papers lamented that "only 500" people had shown up, implying that maybe the community didn't need a new mosque after all. The old makeshift mosque held 4,000 inside; the community is said to number 70,000 in Milan alone.
It's unsurprising, given the location and general disapproval, that most people gave the services a miss.
No one seems to consider the basic right to pray, which, to my mind, doesn't hinge on whether some of the citizenry approves or not of your religion. The Catholic Church should have such problems: so many of the houses of worship in Milan are empty that they're closed most of the time or perhaps open on Saturday nights in a (vain) attempt to lure Italians back.
Milan isn't the only city facing the conundrum of a mosque with growing pains, some are building super-sized venues, others (many in Europe) seem to think that the only way to handle the question is by pretending the need doesn't exist. One thing is for sure: this ostrich approach won't do much to foster understanding between religions and cultures.
Italian doctors who recently ran a free hot line and website for macho men in crisis weren't expecting the avalanche of traffic -- 15,000 calls and a million web pages viewed in about a month.
Italian stallions evidently aren't so hot to trot as tourist legend would have it.
Young Latin lovers from Southern Italy -- where the climate and the men are thought to be hotter -- are especially "worried, fragile and anxious" when it comes to sexual performance.
Well, they must have had an inkling something was amiss between the sheets: the initiative set up by the national association of andrology (SIA) was titled "love without worries."
"Most callers were young people who tend to use Internet and the phone more," explained Bruno Giammusso, andrologist and scientific coordinator of the campaign. "The amount of traffic, however, must make us wonder why young Italian men are so preoccupied even in the absence of specific problems."
Most frequent nagging questions? Duration, performance and size. Some 42.3% of the inquiries were from Southern Italy and just 11.4% from Northern Italy.
Although Giammusso said the size issue is often unjustified (one wonders if there were tape measures involved in the fretful phone calls) he does note that callers exhibited a lack of adequate sex education and the wrong role models.
Who knew that Fabios ever felt less than fabulous? By other measuring sticks, Italian men certainly sound satisfied. Then again, all of those anonymous surveys aren't exactly scientific, in as far as how many people called up randomly are going to admit to sexual inadequacy? Certo che no!
If this crisis of confidence is really so widespread, it may be time to update the guidebooks.
Italians are now back to doling out grandparent's names or those of patron saints to the few precious bambini they're having after a wave of Sue Ellens, Naomis and Kevins, according to a recent data from National Statistics Bureau ISTAT.
Back on Italy's baby-name hit list are classics like Francesco, Alessandro, Matteo, Paola and Elena. The two most popular Italian baby names are Francesco for boys and Giulia for girls, with 10,000 kids in 2004-2006 named after each.
Other popular names were more regional, such as Matteo and Alessandro (Northern Italy), Lorenzo (Central Italy, Tuscany and Lazio), and Antonio and Giuseppe (Southern Italy.) The North-South divide was less pronounced in female names with faves like Francesca and Martina popular all through the peninsola.
Foreign names, many of them plucked from soap opera and movie stars, were a seductive fad and a constant hassle. Even though the Italian alphabet reintroduced the letters K, J, H, W and X (they were outlawed during Fascism) pronunciation was difficult and many parents resorted to improbable spellings like Gessica, Illary -- pronounced E-larry -- and Gionatan (that's Jonathan, to you) to make sure fellow citizens could get the sound right.
Children were saddled with these trendy monikers for good because Italian courts only allow name changes in very limited circumstances -- and having to go through life as Uma or Britney isn't one of them.
Famous Italians, however, are still stuck on strange names. One does nearly feel sorry for their children, who like their U.S. counterparts, are saddled with guess-whose-kid-I-am names, such as soccer star Francesco Totti's daughter Chanel, or actress Monica Bellucci's daughter Deva, fabulous in Sanskrit but in Italian sounds like a contorted version of "have to" or "must."
Italy's Premier Silvio Berlusconi has wasted no time during his second tenure getting the press to notice him. It does seem unfortunate that he mostly seems to do this by buffoonery, rather than policy.
Among the more serious charges: running what must be an awfully threadbare casting couch.
Phone taps have him intervening on behalf of talent-free starlets, trying to finagle them into acting parts in state broadcaster RAI's already overburdened melodramas. (Full disclosure: I worked for a couple of years as a journalist at Canale 5, the flagship station of Mediaset, founded by Berlusconi but at the time already run by his children. There were a few instances where, thanks to family connections or nudges, someone got a job, but probably not more than in big media anywhere.)
Following his outrage at having to be questioned by magistrates on weekends instead of "enjoying his houses, children and wife" he quickly moved to limit the powers of courts to touch his double-breasted tranquility.
Outraged opposition member Antonio Di Pietro, ex-"Clean Hands" prosecutor, with his usual bulldog delicacy called Berlusconi a "pimp," and when prompted to apologize to the premier, he refused on grounds that both he and the Italian people were owed an apology for this unstatesman-like behavior.
An accusation not helped by the fact that Berlusconi, always trying to be noticed, launched another fashion faux paus by covering his spray-hair with a jaunty white Panama hat. It's a look that, paired with a black shirt, says go-and-brush-your-shoulders-off as eloquently as anything could.
Recently, I had the chance to chat with a People of Liberty party flack. When I tried to sympathize with her over it must be like to deal with his big tent behavior, she replied, snidely, that he does it on purpose. It's all an act, to provoke the press (foreign press especially) and laugh along as they laugh at him. Whatever. I'm not getting the joke.
Italy is a nation founded on work (that's the first line of the constitution, as I never tire of repeating) but the country has the some of the most rigid labor laws in Europe.
It's hard to get hired. It's nearly impossible to get fired. So a Donald Trump canning yelp or liberating "Take This Job and Shove It" can often mean a trip to the lawyers for both parties.
This lack of flexibility has meant that companies strongarm new hires into signing a resignation letter (sans date) so that when they're not needed they can be liquidated.
I've never been able to leave a full-time permanent post without taking my contract over to a long-suffering lawyer friend to work around the ridiculous clauses (like three-month notice, two-year post job non-competing agreements) enabling me to slip out the back, Jack.
That may change with a new law requiring electronic communications to fire or quit jobs.
Though every single news account stressed the online component, like most things here (even playing the online lottery) an in-person visit was involved. Instead of the information highway, everything still traveled on the bureaucratic mule cart.
Now the whole process can be done online, but whether that stops employers from forcing de trop employees to resign by force is open to question.
It works like this: any worker who wants to say sayonara to his or her salaried post registers online and fills out a quitting form. It's pretty straightforward, though it requires more information at hand than just a regular resignation letter -- fiscal code of the employer, exact starting date -- and there's no advice on what to put under "reason for quitting."
The form piles into a Labor Ministry database, the quittee takes away a numbered copy as receipt. Within 15 days, the quittee gives the resignation form to the employer or it is invalid. (You can still go through an intermediary, namely city hall or the unions, if you don't trust the Internet or have access at home).
An IT manager I know went through the process when it first became law back in March. He had an offer from a foreign company opening an Italian branch and held off on the quitting form because the new company was having problems vetting the Italian labor laws (surprise!) and was stuck waiting on the contract.
Once he "applied" to quit, he only had 15 days to do so. Feeling the squeeze, he decided to get the quitting form sorted out, just in case. He wasted half a day at city hall to apply for his resignation.
As chance would have it, the new employer rang him at the hospital where his wife had gone for an emergency operation, telling him to come sign the contract. Visiting hours over, he booked over to sign and then slapped his (totally clueless) employer with the form.
Just how does an electronic version stop employers from standing over your PC and forcing you to fill out the quitting doc? Clearly, it can't. One less visit to a lawyer's, maybe, for anyone quitting without complications, but that's debatable.
Freshman fashion house Premoli, best known for sticking relatively thin models in tubs of spaghetti, is casting about for human-sized mannequins once again.
Milanese designing duo Dario Di Bella and Giovanni Premoli, whose handsome youthful faces and carefully-waxed brows smile knowingly from the press kit, announced a new crusade for size 8 models to slouch down fashion week catwalks in June.
The casting call beckons models who "eat properly, demonstrate a good attitude and positivity in a size 8 (Italian 42).....and along with these good qualities, height doesn't hurt."
Just how they will gauge a good attitude and healthy eating in models sized-out of the big-name shows as opposed to young women desperate to work during fashion week when these qualities are as elusive as a Hermès Birkin bag is beyond me.
"Being beautiful isn't necessarily about being thin, it's about being positive in body and spirit," the clothiers said in a statement, adding that a typically curvy Mediterranean beauty also symbolizes personality and character.
And while size does matter, it's not all about numbers. Flip through the fashion house's two previous collections and you'll see that while there are no haunted Flowers in the Attic faces and cry-for-help protruding rib cages, there's definitely daylight shining between them there Valkyrie's thighs.
The question is: do women who clad themselves in Gucci really care what size the models are? Or the ones who can't afford Gucci -- or can at best sandwich an arm into the leg of a size 0 -- and buy the sunglasses instead care whether the models starve?
My hunch says no. They don't care. And perhaps there's a certain pleasure in seeing those giant-eyed lunar looking girls subsisting on apples to become the human hangers displaying this season's retro print Miu Miu frock for them to purchase, vanity-sized, later.
All the hot-air government crusades will do little against this toothpick plague until the average Vogue subscriber gets involved.
We'll keep seeing hollow, publicity-seeking initiatives like this one, which inadvertently shed some insight to the fashion world today.
Last season, Premoli had a hard time finding models to fit the shiny red satin frocks. Out of over 200 aspiring Giseles who came with portfolios, they sent away 60% due to physiques so scrawny only an anatomist could love them.
Pink is still in. Even more so in Milan, Italy's fashion capital, where pregnant women can park for free in special pink spaces.
The city recently launched a Pink Parking Program that by 2011 will give pregnant women a total of 17 "courtesy areas" (hospitals, pediatric clinics) where they can park free for 90 minutes. (The "pink is for girls" idea is common in Italy, where even steely feminists seem to accept that any women's initiative usually has the word associated with it, such as "quote rosa" (pink quotas) for women in politics.)
With one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, Italians are scrambling to create bambini bonuses and oddball initiatives to convince women to have more children.
A recent study showed, however, that countries like Italy where women feel less able to control their lives -- birth control, abortion, divorce, work -- they have fewer children. In Sweden, for example, 72% of women use birth control, 2.4 every 1,000 women are divorced and a whopping 3% of the GDP is dedicated to social programs that favor maternity (inexpensive and plentiful childcare, real paternity leave, etc) resulting in an average of two kids per woman.
Italy, on the other hand, only 39% use birth control, the divorce rate is 0.7 and 1.1% of the GDP is dedicated to family initiatives. The result? In the poorer and rural areas of Italy, the average is 1.06 child per woman.
Presenting the research, demographic expert Letizia Mencarini told papers that "Italy's reputation as the country for families lives on only in stereotypes."
Though Milan, the city with the highest number of working mothers in Italy has also been enjoying a baby boomlet, aided but not entirely bolstered by resident foreigners.
I have my doubts about how useful the initiative is, how much of the population it might touch when the city couldn't even get a few future mamme for the photo op, which shows two elderly city councilmen standing sheepishly with hands in suit pants on a parking space the shade of Pepto-Bismol.
Foreigners who learn Italian often want to get up to speed on vitriolic cuss words or smooth sweet nothings. Swearing like a Turk (as they say) came easy to me, but greetings were tough to get right.
In the morning, you say "buon giorno," but in Florence, where I learned Italian, they start kicking in with good afternoon/evening at around noon. And although saying "sera" to someone at 1 p.m. will get you raised eyebrows in most other parts of Italy, the habit has stuck with me.
Then there's the age and status component: just who can you toss a very casual "ciao" at and who not? It's a salutation minefield, and when you can't get the first words out with any finesse, the conversation goes downhill faster than a Fiat with faulty brakes.
And so when I moved to Milan, it was with great pleasure that "salve" came into my life. It's the closest thing Italian has to a generic, all-purpose "hello," you can pretty much say it to any one, any time of day and in any situation.
Pronounced "sal-vay," the word also means "safe" as in "safe and sound" (sano e salvo) and that's how it made me feel: secure. It's not a personal greeting, you wouldn't want to use it to someone you really know and chat with, so it's perfect for nodding acquaintances. Like all-black outfits, it's much more frequently found in Northern Italy, but works well in the rest of the peninsula.
Just how small my "salve" circle was became apparent one recent rainy morning when a corner of my kitchen started to look like a Rorschach test from a persistent leak. The landlord said I needed to the key to a lock for the roof before we could make an appointment to get it fixed.
I didn't have it and the two downstairs neighbors I'm friendly with didn't either. So who to ask? Not the recycling fascist, for sure. I couldn't stand another lecture on removing the plastic windows from paper envelopes. There's a woman known as "wife-of-the-restaurant-owner" (why don't I know her name?), sometimes encountered around the bike rack, but wasn't sure what kind of reaction I'd get if I knocked on her door.
The rest of the palazzo residents I wasn't sure I'd recognize if I saw them at the supermarket around the corner. Stuck in etiquette limbo, I sat on the project (and interpreted the changing pattern of the stain) for about a week. Then I checked out the lock and found someone had forgot to close it, so the immediate problem was solved.
But it got me thinking: just how many people do I see frequently (at the robo-cop gym, the supermarket, the park) that I might say hello to? Without being creepy or practicing some sort of massive group come-on? And how many more might I chat to, if I had a go?
Thought I'm not exactly a shrinking violet -- and grew up with a dad who has never met anyone at a flea market, Mexican restaurant or church social that he didn't like -- speaking a foreign language learned as an adult has made me shy and tentative.
Because if you open up your mouth to a stranger and the weather comment is grammatically faulty or imperfectly accented, people look at you funny. And tend to follow up with an unfriendly, "Where are YOU from?" that often sounds more like, "Hark! Who goes there?"
So you either shut up (previous strategy) or not care if it doesn't come out right (new strategy).
Predictably, the experiment got me into a few cringe-worthy scrapes. Confident I remembered the name of a woman in yoga class, I kept repeating her wrong name in conversation, only to realize later, when the instructor corrected her by name, that all women of a certain age with slightly bouffy wheat-colored short hair look alike to me. Or the supermarket checkout girl, thrown the offhand (but sincere) compliment on her poker-straight, black hair only to respond with an eye roll, "When have you ever seen my hair differently? I mean, do I know you?" Ouch.
The security guard outside the bank that I walk past every day on my way to the newsstand still watches silently with suspicion and crossed arms, refusing to exchange my greetings, but the elderly doorman at the palazzo next to the bank now gives me a real smile and a "salve" every single morning, which feels like an accomplishment. Another neighbor invited me for dinner and Italian X-factor (addictive!), and it turned out his wife had invited an old friend of mine over, too. (Note to self: Milan is a lot smaller than it looks. Behave accordingly).
As a bonus, there's been lots of good information (Benetton is the go-to place for cute, inexpensive bikinis, AC Milan has had better seasons, RyanAir is having a one-euro sale if you book now) and while the results are unpredictable, you can triple-fold your circle of acquaintances in about six weeks, even in a big city, if you start your local equivalent of "salvay-ing" today.
If you try it, let me know what happens.
