There she goes: Miss Italia

I don’t usually pay much attention to beauty contests because I think they are pretty stupid, but Miss Italia is very often an important stepping stone to a career in Italy, even for those who didn’t win. One of the most successful new talk show hosts came in third a few years ago, and Sofia Loren, for that matter, won something like Miss Congeniality in the 1940s.
As in most beauty contests, these girls are very young. The oldest this year was 26, and most were 18 or 19. Nice clean-cut girls, right? At university or recently graduated from high school and thinking that maybe being pretty might give them a chance at something other than the humdrum. If this TV show is indicative, she’d be right, but maybe not in the way her parents imagined.

The hostess of the show was a well-respected female entertainer rather than the usual drooling hosts of other years. I thought that might raise the bar a bit in the good taste stakes. It didn’t.

The judges were the same ones that judge half of the contests of various kinds on RAI. One of them is supposed to be a clothing designer, but I have never seen his clothes. Another is an aged musician. The only female was a Romanian singer whose work is long gone, but who is a little bit famous because she was married to Cecchi-Gori, a flamboyant entrepreneur and impressario whose affairs since his divorce are followed by what is called the pink press. None of the judges were pretty or handsome or seemed to have any idea what they were doing. In an interview the designer said he was happily the last in the line because it gave him a chance to counteract the enthusiasm of those earlier in the voting line. That attitude led him to giving certain girls a 3 out of 10, causing them to burst into tears. Why no secret ballot? I am betting it’s because they think the audience likes these outbursts and the seeming meanness and competition off the runway.

The costuming was astounding. The swimsuits looked just like costumes for the Moulin Rouge or a Las Vegas chorus line except they all had tops. I wonder how many years before they get over that?

The casting was pretty much all men except for the contestants. They were divided into cutesy divisions such as “vamp”, “trendy”, “romantic” and “sporty” and each division was assigned a male actor that supposedly expressed that idea. When they performed, the actors also performed as well as some male dancers.

There was an effort to make all of the contest into an entertainment. I suppose all of the preceding was in aid of that. The girls were coached to sing, dance and otherwise express talents most of them do not have. After all, the promo material that led up to the three night show had the hostess exclaiming that “beauty is a talent!” You know what? It isn’t.

The dancing was about like the sexual posing, bumps, grinds we are used to on almost every Italian TV show. Usually the TV news is exempt, but during the lead for the contest they were on the news as well. To my mind, pole dancing is a choice that the so-called velene can choose if she doesn’t get the job as letter turner and still wants to be in show biz. To my mind it is not something you require 60 young girls to do on public television in order to try for the brass ring of Miss Italia. I was disgusted. If I were a parent I would have pulled my daughter.

I think we have become too inured to the vulgarization of Italian girls, so inured that a middle-aged women with children and a reputation for supporting conservative Catholic politics and values, could mix these kids up with the has-been stars she usually present on “Ballando con le Stelle.” I only saw a few minutes here and there, but I wondered at what I saw. Would Milli Carlucci like to take the videos of this show to the Vatican and share them with His Holiness? If not, then why did she happily put these teenagers through this brutal experience?

Everything about it looked to me designed to humiliate, abase and embarrass these girls. The fact that most of them bravely stood up and said, “I don’t care. It was a thrill to get this far” when that grossly vulgar dress designer finished grandstanding, to me seemed that they’d given up all hope of personal dignity.

“It’s a show,” he said in an interview, “and when 60 girls compete for one prize, many must cry.” Well, sure, but they might be given the chance to do so in private not in front of the country when he slapped them with a 6, a 4, a 3, pretty much indicating that to him this girl was nothing. These were not overaged dancing contestants who were paid hundreds of thousands to compete. These were kids, the children of Italy.

I don’t even blame him, really, because he is the same all the time in all situations. The organizers of the contest were to blame for hiring as judges such a lackluster company. They were to blame for the vulgarity of the costumes, the dancing to songs like “Sex Bomb” and “Candy Man” in dances where the male professional dancers felt the girls up in no uncertain manner. Has no one in Italy yet figured out that the Candy Man is a drug dealer? Or do they not care?

Are they ignorant or just simply so vulgar themselves that they don’t recall what decency is? For example, there were many distinguished Italians among the special guests– singers, an Olympic champion, the hottest young male cinema star, but the foreign guest was Paris Hilton! What an example of celebrity to set before a bunch of 18 year olds. A woman, is Hilton, who is famous for showing her unclothed crotch in public places and for films on the internet of her having sex with her boyfriend of the moment. They paid her a lot of money to attend… why?

Well, it’s all over now and the cute winner from Calabria is set for a year of nicely paid appearances and the others have had the exposure to try for jobs. But jobs as what? Pole dancers? Nearly nude hootchie dancers on quiz shows? Chorus girls in Paris or Las Vegas? Hookers? This contest/show did not evince any capablities beyond these.

If the parents of Italy don’t start caring about how their children’s sexuality is exploited by government supported television, there’s no hope for Italian womankind. I wish Miss Perrusi well, but frankly, this Miss Italia of 2009 was the most vulgar version of a concept that starts out with vulgarity. It should die right now.

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