The skin they're in: the uneasy paradox of Italian women - Part 2

...continued from the previous post's Part 1

But do Italian women even want to shout basta? Are they truly unhappy with their lot? The Family is still the linchpin of Italian society--a fact which permeates every molecule of existence in the Bel Paese, every aspect of public and private life. It is both a great asset as well as, depending on one's point of view, a great hindrance. Maybe Tobias Jones's feminism wasn't so much forgotten in this land as it was never really of the kind suitable to the majority of Italian women--whose ties to Family run so deep--and perhaps they're waiting for something uniquely Italian to take its place, something that would better allow for the role culture plays in their lives. But isn't culture also the problem? The thorns on the rose, so to speak? The crux is that Italian women are themselves integral to and collusive in the very cultural constructs some of them would seek to change.

Basta! Well maybe, sort of....

La mamma è sempre la mamma

Italy is still a rigidly patriarchal society, and it's no secret that within this society women are essentially enshrined upon the pedestal of motherhood (while paradoxically, in the words of one of my favorite bloggers, often being treated like "second-class citizens"*). Men like to think they're in charge, and in so many ways they are. Men are the jacket-clad TV show hosts to the giggling, half-naked women gyrating on stage, who allow their impossibly perfect derrières to be man-stamped "approved for consumption". Men cavort at the stadio while their wives take little Marco or Francesco to soccer practice and the dentist, do the shopping and laundry, and make sure dinner's on the table at 8. Only in Italy can men live with their mothers, wear underwear ironed by her, and still demand (implicitly or explicitly) that their girlfriends mortify their flesh in all manner of ways in order to be considered f***able.

But unpack these stereotypes a bit and you start to understand the power that Italian women wield, at least within the domestic sphere. In many ways, Italian women move through life confidently. Their position is assured, taken for granted, a given: they are keepers of the flame, the guardians of home and hearth, the center of the (often extended) family. Within this tight circle, they are typically the supreme authority (though they may give lip-service to male domination)--and as such typically enjoy respect from both within their social and familial sphere as well a hearty nod of approbation from society at large. Only in this capacity, perhaps, is it so easy and natural for Italian women to make a difference, to matter vitally, to rule with benevolence (despotic or otherwise), to have their efforts rewarded and contribute to some greater corporate good. Thus the creaky and callithumpian machinery of patriarchal Italy is paradoxically oiled by the love, sweat and tears of Italian women.

source: Il Vescovado

I've observed my female family members**--my various Italian in-laws--and, forgive my congenital skepticism, part of me can't help but wonder if Italian women get off on the domestic power trip because it's so often the only game in town. Certainly my Machiavellian MIL operates like a gremlin-sized Genghis Khan or a shriveled Sun King.

L'état, c'est moi

George Bernard Shaw said "the domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men." But is domesticity, and the sense of satisfaction it brings--as one Italian female commentator seemed to imply in Part 1--somehow more indigenous to Italian women? Is it what matters most to them? And if so, have they been culturally conditioned to this response or do they just have their priorities straight and aren't afraid to admit it? Or is the answer perhaps sandwiched somewhere in between? I suppose there's always a fine line between making real choices and cultural coercion--a sort of gender-based free will vs. determinism conundrum--but I'd say that Italian women often seem to follow a script not entirely of their own creation.

A Florentine friend of my husband, who is married to an American woman and lives in the States, was recently in town and staying with his elderly mother. During his visit, he insisted on doing his own laundry--as is his habit in the New World--and hanging it out to dry on the balcony of their housing block. His befuddled mother begged him to let her do it, pleaded with him to stop--or at the very least to let her be seen hanging it out to dry as if she'd washed it herself so the neighbors wouldn't think she wasn't taking good care of her son. While undoubtedly this kind of thing can be drawn along generational lines to a large extent, is an exaggerated sense of the importance of duty and the female domestic role within the larger cultural context responsible for such zealotry? We've all seen those Italian homes: gleaming, crumbless, dust-bunny-free floors you can eat ravioli off of; bathroom fixtures as resplendent as the Elgin Marbles and wreathed in fumes of bleach and lavender; neat stacks of pressed jeans in the armadi along with crisp rows of dress shirts like so many soldiers ready for victory or at the very least an honorable death. Such an edifice to uphold.

And yet, and yet... Italian women elude easy stereotypes while at the same time appearing to reinforce them. They truly are remarkable creatures: strong, resilient, hard and soft, and capable of such fierce familial love. I think back through those events of the 20th century that stained this peninsula with blood and suffering, and I hear the voices of my husband's elderly aunts from the Mugello, telling stories of hunger and making do, of large families reduced to terrible poverty, of births and deaths and living off the land, and it seems to me that it is always the women: the women who bear the heaviest portion and keep the family from sinking into the abyss. And how these aunts, these wonderful steely ladies, show their capacity for joy; their laughs are like the delightful twittering of birds, their smiles deep and profound. They've raised their families well and are well-loved in turn, and I sense the sure, square peace they've made with their own brand of dharma. These are women who could rule the world.

***

It occurs to me that perhaps cultures develop symbioses in gender roles, or even coping mechanisms. If the traditional Italian man is a bamboccione, then the role of the Italian woman has perhaps evolved in such a way as to both complement and compensate for this--a kind of gender Darwinism, if you will. Or yin and yang (or--forgive me--spaghetti and tomato sauce). But the problem with this line of thought is that it doesn't take into account the fact that it is these same women who seed and nurture traditional Italian manhood in the first place--and thus gender Darwinism is replaced by a kind of odd what-comes-first-the-mammone-or-the-mamma? sort of argument.

My three sisters-in-law are examples of this. Each are raising her boys to be essentially helpless things--sweet, kind helpless things, to be sure, but helpless things nevertheless***. I often think of their poor future wives. And my nieces have clearly been groomed to assume the traditional mantle of caretakers to the sweet, helpless things they eventually marry. I can only hope and believe that this sort of thing is on the wane, and that my in-laws are--as they surely are in so very many ways--an aberration.

But, in more general terms, how can things change for Italian women--in the ways that many seem to want--if something doesn't change in the way Italian men are raised? And changing how men are raised implies a radical change in the culture behind such gender roles, doesn't it? (Media representations of women, an issue which is at the forefront of the current women's movement in Italy, are manifestations of a male worldview that is surely equal parts culture-nurture, for instance). The power that Italian women wield on the home front seems to be the coiled serpent lying at the base of Italy's spine, a kind of glorious kundalini goddess who need only awaken herself to her own manifest potential; the choice to use her formidable and loving influence in raising responsible, sensitive and aware men--ever-mindful of their future roles as husbands and fathers--is surely the obvious step toward the kind of feminism that perhaps makes more cultural sense in Italy. Of course, this means relinquishing a certain amount of traditional female control and the kind of co-dependency that it so often fosters; when mamma bear teaches her cub survival skills, it eventually goes off on its own into the wild to fend for itself. It probably won't come back and live with her until it's 40.

***

As to whether or not Italian women are completely at ease in their skin and content with the status quo, or whether or not they would fight for or seek change--well, that's something that only each individual woman can answer. With all that she has on her brimming plate, amid all the tasks she performs for her family so lovingly and so well, let's hope she remembers to ask herself the question.

*For more on the cultural angle regarding women in Italy and a window onto some of the current activities of the women's movement, I highly recommend this wonderfully interesting post by the excellent blogger/writer Michelle Tarnopolsky

**I've written about my SILs and Italian housewifely duties here.

***More anecdotal evidence regarding the raising of mammoni here.

The skin they're in: the uneasy paradox of Italian women - Part 1

The scene: an elementary schoolyard.

Little girls run about, playing tag, leaping like free-spirited gazelles on the African savanna; they fall down and scrape knees, kick balls and climb the perimeter fence along with the boys, their hair tangled and streaming behind them like the militant flags of some young republic. They loudly and forthrightly speak their minds, bellow their desires, call raucously to their companions, and flee their mothers or nonni with great rebellious whoops. "Non mi piace!" [I don't like it!]" Quello mi fa schifo!" [That's disgusting!] "Non voglio andare!" [I don't want to go!] There is nothing here, in this crystallized moment of exuberant youth, to cause them to doubt themselves or be conscious of the gazes of others: they are pint-size packages of pure self-awareness, pure potential, pure elemental force.

If you could catch them and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, you would get these answers: zoologist, teacher, bus driver, doctor, rock star or toy store owner or dog walker (those last three being my own daughter's peripatetic career goals).

Standing all around nearby, like fixed stars in a firmament of tiny hurtling meteors, the picture of Italian womanhood changes. There are the indomitable grandmothers in sturdy shoes and silk scarves, watching their charges with hawk eyes, cringing and shouting uselessly when tiny togs get dirty. There are groups of mothers--the ones whose schedules or housewifely status allow them to be present at this hour--chatting, smoking avidly, looking decidedly less carefree than the young females around them. Many are over-tanned, with deeply-lined skin and dark circles under their eyes, yet are very carefully and self-consciously tucked into tight, stylish clothing and heels, designer sunglasses perched just so on top of smooth dark hair. Trying to make themselves heard over the general din, they squawk with the shrill-edged voices of tropical birds too long in the sun, with colorful kid backpacks dangling off their shoulders like exotic plumage--and they seem manic, stretched too tight: like the skins of drums made for the manipulative hands of others, used to beat out rhythms not of their own making. On the surface of things, they seem happy enough.  But are they? If you asked them, what would they say? Would they speak their minds as confidently as the small, schoolyard sirens all around them? 

Anna Magnani: one tired mamma

Much of Italian life is marked by paradox: Italians adore bambini but little is provided for them by State or City in terms of services or enrichment activities beyond school; the Church is everywhere and nowhere at the same time; in general Italians have very little civic sense or regard for those not of their immediate conoscenza, yet have an extraordinary capacity for empathy. Italian women and their roles are marked by the same paradoxical nature, ambiguities, contrasts, and gray areas so common to this peninsula--and are similarly bound by history and tradition, along with an oppressively patriarchal society.

Here are some of the stats:

--In 2012 Italy fell from 74th to 80th place out of 135 countries in terms of gender equality (for comparison's sake, the USA is at 22 and Ireland, another traditional Roman Catholic country, ranks 5th). Countries like China, Sri Lanka, Ghana and Botswana rank higher *

--Only 48.5 percent of Italian women are employed, a gender gap that is the second-lowest in Europe, Malta being the lowest.

--the average Italian woman has 1.4 children (in the U.S. it's 2.1, in Ireland 1.9)

--In Europe, Italian women have the greatest household workload (Swedish women the least)

Though there are encouraging signs of change, traditional gender roles persist in that many Italian men (whom I've written about here) still see domestic chores, childcare and caring for elderly parents as women's work and show little interest in becoming involved. Beyond paid maternity leave, there's not much help from the State for working mothers, such as access to affordable daycare or more flexible labor laws that better allow for part-time employment, especially when compared to other European countries. The fact that the State provides so little in terms of services for the infirm elderly also means that this burden falls squarely on the shoulders of Italian women. The battalions of nonne that are depended upon to care for grandchildren are charming on the one hand, but speak of a general lack of State support and viable options for women on the other. These are all factors contributing to the low female employment rate (as well as the low birth rate) in this country; Italian women are like butter--they can only be spread over so much bread before becoming too thin and exhausted. Indeed, in the excellent documentary film about Italy, "Girlfriend in a Coma," a female minister describes Italian women as "the only effective and existing welfare system." Is it any wonder that those in power do nothing when there's so much cheap slave labor out there?

The issues facing Italian women make for a very complex topic, embedded as they are in tradition, societal expectations and even religion (the Virgin Mary being the predominant role model), while at the same time being influenced by BerlusconiVision: the media proliferation of scantily-clad showgirls and empty-headed gold-diggers (talk about your Madonna/whore syndrome). To me, the pressures on Italian women seem enormous: for the entire trajectory of their lives they must strive to be good, obedient daughters, mothers, lovers, wives and even grandmothers. And they must always look good, too: properly turned out in the latest fashions, groomed, coiffed, manicured, svelte, and ideally stuffed into skinny jeans and mini-skirts, regardless of age or inclination. How often have I walked behind a woman with long, wavy, luscious blonde hair, in tight leopard-print trousers and stiletto boots, only to have her turn her head and reveal the face of a hag pushing seventy sucking on a cigarillo. There is such pressure to conform, to submit to the traditional female roles and the tyranny of the ever-present male gaze.

Lorella Zanardo (of "Il Corpo delle Donne" fame) talks about this tyranny in the equally excellent documentary, "Italy: Love it or Leave it". She says, "women have a fear of losing that approving masculine gaze, a fear that is so strong in Italy. We need to work on feeling sure on our own legs." I would add that this critical male gaze, and the imposition of patriarchal codes of behavior, comes not only from husbands and lovers (real or potential), but also from fathers, brothers, bosses/male co-workers, clergy. The media is saturated with it. And the weight of this collective, subtle and at times blatant pressure and expectation to conform, as well as the obsessive female hunger for male approval, seems like a chunk of blunt travertine around the neck of the Italian woman.

Good mammas

Hot mammas

Tobias Jones described Italy as "the land that feminism forgot".** While I would agree, I do think there's a lot more to it than that, and while I acknowledge the complexity of the issues facing Italian women today, I can only share my opinions and observations based on my experiences living here among them all these years.

I must say that I am rather in awe of Italian women, and also perplexed by them. They've always managed to elude my complete understanding, which I've come to believe is due to their paradoxical nature (more on this to follow). I'm in awe of them because they are surely among the strongest, hardest-working and most chic women on the planet. They seem selfless, and yet I know things are not entirely as they appear: there is that element, to be sure, but I also get the sense that they are moving within tight, rigid grooves; that they are engines set in motion by forces beyond their control, carefully-calibrated mechanisms that will eventually spend themselves, never having set their own course. I am perplexed by how they so willingly mount the burning pyre, becoming satis to tradition and expectation, over and over again.

Will they never shout BASTA! with the same fiery passion and conviction of their wild-haired, 7 year-old counterparts?

Part 2 to follow in another post...

* Source: World Economic Forum Gender Equality Index
** Also check this out this link for another good take on the subject

The (un)making of the Italian man

Dear Readers,

Who doesn't like them? And who wouldn't want to have one (at least every now and then)? I'm talking about Italian men, of course.

A group of multigenerational Latin lookers
source: magtrends

They're well-tailored and stylish and typically fit at any age. They have great taste in shoes. They preen and strut like feral peacocks--though at the same time they're sweet and rather boyish. They enjoy good food and know about wine, but they don't get drunk and sloppy (if they make fools of themselves, they tend to do it sober). Yet for all their undeniable, perennial, animal allure, there's a dark side to the Italian man. There's definitely a dark side.

And this is it: behind every handsome, fashionable, charmingly bestubbled, motorino-revving Italian man are two women: the mother who ruined him and the wife who makes excuses for him. Both should be shot.

Pictured here is Captain Francesco Schettino, the man whose ego, irresponsibility, and lack of intestinal fortitude allegedly caused the recent Costa Concordia disaster which claimed so many lives. While I'm not saying that he typifies Italian men (after all, every nation has its moral and intellectual laggards), I'd argue that he's the inevitable product of certain cultural tendencies in Italy, and it is this culture--from whence such a lily-livered lounge lizard springs--that I'd like to explore. I'll begin with a few vignettes from personal experience.

***

When my Italian nephews were in high school, they used to come over to my MIL's house every day after school got out for a hot lunch, since their own mother was at work. She would have the table set and their primo of pasta ready as soon as they dumped their backpacks on the floor and flopped into their chairs. They'd flick on the TV and zone out to anime cartoons while she busily set the food in front of them, then she'd scurry back into the kitchen to prepare their secondo and side dishes while they wolfed down their pasta. If they needed a napkin (which were located in the sideboard about three feet from where they were sitting), they'd call out, "Nonna! Napkin!" and she'd scuttle out to get it for them and then scuttle back to her hissing frying pans. If she'd forgotten to give them a lemon wedge for their fish, they'd call out, "Nonna! Limone!" After they'd been served their last course of ice cream or fruit, they'd reluctantly switch off the TV, rise from the table with a carefree adolescent burp, volley a "ciao" towards the kitchen where the chintz-swathed MIL was vigorously scrubbing pots, and saunter out of the house--leaving the table strewn with dirty dishes, bread crumbs, spilled water, and orange peels.

I never saw these boys--who are as sweet as bomboloni, mind you--take out the garbage, or hang a load of laundry up to dry, or do any chores whatsoever around the house, and both of their parents work full-time. They always wore trendy jeans and sneakers, had cell phones, ample allowances, and rode to school on their own mopeds (one of them even had an additional motocross bike, just for fun)--which is fine, of course. It's just that nothing was ever expected of them in return. Their mother pampers them--still--even more than their nonna, treating them like babies who can barely be trusted to feed themselves or wipe their own behinds. When one of them--at age 21--was horsing around in front of his girlfriend and destroyed our large outdoor storage bin, my husband waited a week in vain for the young man to at least apologize before confronting him and letting him know that we expected it to be replaced. Rather than deal with it himself, his mother (my sister-in-law) knocked on our door and proffered €50, and somewhat in a huff said, "Matteo è rimasto male [is upset at being chastised]. After all, he's only a boy."

***

One of my husband's old school friends from the neighborhood, Guido, separated from his wife some years back. A 46 year-old father of two, he had a good job and a good income by Italian standards, and drove a late-model BMW. As nearly always happens in these cases, he moved back in with his parents and into his old bedroom, sleeping on the narrow twin bed of his childhood. His mother prepares all his meals, does his laundry, presses his shirts for work, and tidies his room--exactly as she used to before he married.

*** 

Okay, this isn't relevant but
I personally have a real thing for Carabinieri ;-)

***

Another twenty-something nephew of mine recently landed a decent job with a much-coveted permanent work contract. He has a longtime girlfriend and they talk of getting married. Since boyhood he's been sharing a 7 x 10 foot bedroom with his slightly younger brother and his sister who's younger by some 10 years. He still sleeps, contentedly, in the cramped upper tier of a bunk bed which is crammed into the suffocatingly close space, stuffed as it is with the beds and bulky wardrobes and computer desks of two grown young men and a 15 year-old girl. But there was no question of him moving out--instead he bought himself a new car.

***

One of my brothers-in-law who has two kids has never changed a diaper. (I'll pause to let that sink in fully). Another brother-in-law, once it was established that his gag-reflex was too pronounced, poor thing, never had anything more to do with the diapers, illnesses, or potty training (or much else related to child-rearing) of his three children, even though his wife, like most Italian women these days, works. A third brother-in-law--the one who lives across town--brings his laundry over for my MIL to do when his own wife is away, and insists on dragging his wife and daughters to the MIL's every weekend for a big lunch prepared by mamma's loving hands, even though her age and ailments make this an increasingly difficult burden. (And when the nonni moved into their small granny unit, this same brother-in-law insisted they keep the enormous refectory-style dining table--even though it makes their dwarf-sized salottino impossibly cramped--so he could dine in accustomed comfort on the weekends).

***

Laura, an Italian mom with whom I'm friendly--our sons go to school together--recently separated from her husband. She confided that for years her husband has simply not been "present" in the marriage (incidentally I've had one other friend and a hairdresser say the same thing about their husbands. They both chose separation). Like so many Italian men, he prefers to hang out at the coffee bar or soccer stadium, or surf the Net or peruse the Gazzetta dello sport, and tends to get restless and bored when forced to hang out with wife and child. He also seems to have had a dalliance with another woman (and the fact that she was a foreigner, to boot--a Filipina--counted as another black mark against him). And yet, like so many Italian men, he expects to find the cupboards and fridge full of food and his dinner on the table every night, his clothes laundered and pressed, and his child scrubbed, homework done, and ready for bed. Well, she'd finally reached her limit, telling me that she already has one kid to look after so why should she want another, one who's 40 years old? But marriage is a two-way street, of course, and knowing how Italian drivers are I think we can allow for a fair amount of  irrational behavior on both sides: in fairness, I have to say that all this woman does when she's not at work is clean her house (or the car, or the stairwell of the building, or the persiane). Seriously. Her house reeks of Lysol. Once when I was over there and she was attempting to converse while frantically scrubbing down the kitchen like some disinfecting dervish, her husband said to me, "Look at her! She's constantly cleaning; it's a sickness." Apparently her own presence in the marriage was up for debate. Anyway, she sent hubs packing and, in typical fashion, he moved back in with his parents.

Too close for comfort? This same mom recently gave her 10 year-old son an enema because "l'intestino era bloccato" (the poor little guy vomited afterwards). And now the two of them live like happy newlyweds in their cozy little love nest, without that pressed-jeans-clad non-entity of a husband casting a pall over the house, and she can coddle her precious, wavy-haired boy to her hearts' content for many long years to come.

'Smother-love

Mammoni. We've all heard this term with regard to Italian men: mamma's boys. One thing's for sure, they don't exist in a vacuum; behind every Italian man there's an unbroken line of Italian mammas, nonnas and bisnonnas reaching back in time through conquests and cantos to the peninsula's murky origins. These are the apron-clad culprits who've perpetrated the irreparable warping of long, spooled chains of psychological DNA for generations of Italian men. From cradle to grave, by mother, wife, and eldest daughter--Italian males are pampered and spoiled, shielded from reality and consequences, and their behavior--no matter how outrageous--indulged. If my MIL is sick or otherwise absent, the FIL--who's in robust health--has his meals prepared and his clothes laundered by some female family member. He never, ever goes to the supermarket or picks up his own prescription meds. He certainly never participated in any of the child-rearing or care of invalid relatives (even his own wheelchair-bound mother)--that was solely women's work. In short, he--like so many other Italian men--has been kept in a child-like, irresponsible state, frozen in a kind of carefully cultivated uselessness and degenerative ineffectuality. I often think how surreally wonderful it must be to go through life like an Italian man--a pasha who merely has to sit down at table and a three-course meal magically appears. And when one has eaten one's fill, all one has to do is arise and go on to other pleasant diversions and let the scullery maid (i.e. the wife) worry about such trivialities as cleanup. And to have all one's clothing washed and ironed and neatly folded and arrayed in one's dresser or wardrobe--not knowing if elves or sprites did it, or one's tired, old, long-suffering handmaiden. And not really being bothered to care either way.

How can such men--grown out of this nascent ooze of medieval manhood--become fully functioning husbands and fathers and students and employees and managers and politicians? How can they become contributing partners in marriages, in companies, in the governing of a nation? How can they be counted on to do the just, right, selfless thing when the ship is sinking? How can they be proper lovers--real soul mates--or innovative entrepreneurs or resolute leaders of men when they can't even boil water for pasta?

The slimy shirker extraordinaire

Francesco Schettino comes from the small town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples. In the aftermath of the disaster, journalists deluged the town and interviewed locals regarding the erstwhile captain's character. Not surprisingly, his wife vociferously lauded his prowess in all fields, and rose to the defense of his integrity and bravery. The local priest followed suit, proclaiming Schettino's unquestionable virtues, while asserting that the overly-aggressive northern journalists and media were demonstrating an age-old prejudice against Neapolitans specifically and southern Italians generally. In other words, the usual battery of excuses was invoked for a man who has doubtless been pampered his whole life and whose rectitude lies limp and flaccid within the starched, molly-coddled confines of his metaphysical Jockeys.

Adorable. But remember: they either live with their mommies or their wives.
Who do you think ironed their underwear?

Insomma, though there exist some notable exceptions, Italian men are like Italian fashions: lovely to look at and to drape over one's body--with some mighty fine detailing and workmanship--but which, alas, usually prove utterly impractical in the end. With every new season, they become obsolete. They become, regrettably, those rather embarrassing choices pushed far to the back of the closet.

Yours,

Campobello

*For a fun, informative and spot-on romp on the subject of Italian men, check out Sara's post at When in Florence.

What's wrong with this picture?

Dear Readers,

As many of you may know, Florence was hit with a Michigan-worthy blizzard the other day, and the city is still reeling from both the incomparable beauty of it all and the utter chaos caused by city bureaucrats being woefully--if not adamantly--unprepared. Without getting into the irony of the fact that apparently Tuscans don't believe in salting their roads as well as their bread, I wanted to describe to you a scene I observed on the evening of the snowstorm, after the worst of it was over and an otherworldly hush had settled over the land. It seemed innocent enough.

I returned home to find my nephew Giulio happily making a snowman in the garden. He smiled broadly and shyly and waved hello, his shaggy mop of dark hair framing his impish face, completely simpatico. A short while later when I went out to get some more wood for the fire, I saw he was still there, the darkening, snow-perfumed sky enfolding him and his Tuscan version of Frosty. Then a shadowy figure emerged from behind the snow-dusted hedge, which was partially screening my view--it was my sister-in-law, Giulio's mother, in the craziest get-up I'd yet seen during this bout of freak weather (thick legwarmers pulled up over sweatpants, a man's parka with a few sweaters oozing out of it at odd angles, a fishermen's hat that was three sizes too big, and bright yellow rubber clogs). After surveying her son's handiwork, she admonished, "Don't stay out too much longer, Giulio, you'll catch cold--besides, it's getting dark." "Sì, mamma," came the obedient reply.

Did I mention that Giulio is twenty-five years old?

Anglo-Saxon mothers of a certain smothersome and anxious stripe are sometimes called "helicopter moms." Well, then--comparatively speaking--Italian mothers are Sherman tanks. Nothing bulldozes a testosterone-laced Italian male and tramples his independence quite so effectively and absolutely as the crippling, hyper-concerned treads of la mamma italiana.

Don't get me wrong--naturally there's nothing askew about an adult having a little fun building a snowman (I might have gladly made one myself, but being a Michigan girl, I've probably surpassed the Wolverine State quota of 2,500 snowmen per life span). But the next day, while Giulio spent the afternoon proudly putting the finishing touches on his opera d'arte, enjoying the sun and the crisp, rarefied air, another scene was playing itself out....

My 85-year-old father-in-law was shoveling snow--huffing and heaving like an early steam locomotive--alongside Giulio's dad, Luca (who, quite honestly, was faring little better).

The family compound being situated on a large plot of land, we were practically buried by snow--there were no clear walkways, the driveway was inundated, and all the cars were blocked in. Thus there was a certain urgency over the driveway being cleared because Matteo--Giulio's brother, age 23--needed desperately to get out with the car (apparently he wanted to meet up with friends--perhaps to build snowmen of their own). You see, dear Readers, my nephews don't work and both live at home with their parents, like so very many Italians, and seem content to do so for years and years--and years--to come. And while they're the two sweetest guys you'd ever hope to meet, they remain utterly naive and as if frozen in some kind of perpetual childhood, like Peter Pan or Michael Jackson. Of course, the pathetic*, rather clownish figure of the Italian mammone is known the world over and is, I think, as indigenous to this sunny peninsula as wild boar and corrupt politicians with bad hair plugs. I have never seen my nephews take out the trash, help clear the table after meals (let alone assist--gasp!--with actual meal preparation or washing dishes), do laundry, do yardwork--do anything, really, that might be construed as chores or taking the bull by the horns.


My name is Giorgio.
I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.

So--let us consider for a moment the picture I have drawn for you, dear Readers, and then let us contemplate in whose hands lies the future of this funny, ungovernable, boot-shaped outcrop of civilized Europe. Soft and immutable--spending their parents' hard-earned money with alacrity, revving their motorini with careless abandon, gobbling meals with the heedlessness of lactating babes, buttoning up their Diesel jeans and lacing their Converse shoes--are these hands capable of scrabbling out a place for Italy in the world that clamors and groans with endeavor outside its very doorstep? To me, these butter-fat, enfeebled, mother-fed hands which prefer to dally with ephemeral pleasures--like snow in Florence--seem far more suited to Neverland than the reality the rest of us mere mortals inhabit.

Yours from the front lines,

Campobello

*An admittedly--an unabashedly--Anglo-Saxon term of judgment for which I offer no apology. To most Italians, of course, there is absolutely nothing conceivably wrong in having your mother either buy or launder your underwear (at age 40 and beyond).

Medea with a touch of schadenfreude

Dear Readers,

To look at her, you wouldn't think my mother-in-law capable of murdering her children. Or poisoning her husband. Or lopping the head off the neighbors' dog with a scythe.

She's a diminutive, demure, hunch-backed, dwarfen old woman who has never worn a pair of trousers in her life. She sports sensible woolen skirts and thick, putty-colored hosiery--and, when around the house, always a long, chintz smock to keep her clothes in respectable condition. When she toddles through the neighborhood in her men's black clodhoppers, head bowed, a benign expression on her face, her hands--with shopping totes dangling from one arm like ganglia--are clasped together tentatively, as if in prayer.

But this is a woman who feeds on the cronaca nera--the sensational journalistic recountings of murder, mayhem and misfortune--like a leech on Jabba the Hutt. For years I have watched her riveted to every grisly news story of infants and fetuses abandoned in dumpsters, toddlers left alone to fall off balconies, and of mothers strangling, stabbing or drowning their own offspring. (Surprisingly, there are thousands of these stories in Italy--clearly, the land where la Mamma reigns supreme has its dark side). The frisson of excitement she experiences over such horrible events is as obvious as the potato-shaped nose on her face. She discusses them endlessly--never failing to interject a devout "O, Signore pietà!" (Lord have mercy!)--and describes all the gruesome details with novelistic brushstrokes worthy of Stephen King. Though my testimony wouldn't hold up in a court of law, I'd swear that at some point her grim narrative begins to sound like wishful thinking.

She's also partial to stories of dogs sinking their teeth into innocent passersby or chewing the arms off babies. She has always harbored the conviction that canines represent malign, satanic forces, and as such should be shunned--like Protestants or feminists--and preferably exterminated from the face of the earth. Even beribboned toy poodles and quivering, hairless chihuahuas send her into paroxysms of fear. When the neighbors' sweet, playful, little black terrier comes prancing and sniffing around, she flees into her house and locks the door as if he were Cerberus incarnate, bent on taking a bite out of her precious pious rump and propelling her into the dank chambers of Hell.

Understand, dear Readers, that my mother-in-law is the most repressed, self-effacing soul there is--she has swallowed her own desires and opinions so long they've metastasized. The notion of free will is as alien to her as, well, wearing pants or ordering in Chinese food. Fanatically serving others in the hope of some Eternal Reward, forever thirsting after a sip from the elusive cup of Life, she's a cross between a heavenly handmaiden with stars in her eyes and a wretched Miss Havisham in a rotting wedding dress.

She didn't choose her life--it was doled out to her like a losing poker hand. And though she endeavors to be a good Catholic, and perform her duties like the good little Christian soldier she is, resentment seeps from her like steam from the lid of a pot kept on a slow, steady boil. She has made innumerable sacrifices for her children and husband--even neighbors and fellow parishoners know her to be easy prey when it comes to their voracious needs. She has told me of the great difficulty she endured in giving birth to four children in under four years, while working part-time as cooks' help and taking care of impossibly demanding invalid relatives, with no help from her paleolithic husband whose only concern was that his meals be on time. Her teeth fell out, her hair thinned, she suffered fainting spells. The midwife told her to stop having children--or get measured for a casket. Her loathing of her husband (the man largely responsible for her servitude) is undisguised, yet she slavishly dispatches her Christian wifely duties--all but one, mind you--as if frantically trying to garner celestial brownie points.

But as the Bard says, "fair is foul, and foul is fair": a while back the doctor told her to slip some liquid valium into her husbands' minestra to calm him down and render him more manageable or some such nonsense, and my mother-in-law asked, "What happens if I give him too much?" with an unmistakable gleam in her eye. Whenever family squabbles arise, she makes sure to fan the flames by playing the "he said, she said" game, pitting one sibling against another with Machiavellian precision, while wringing her hands in feigned concern. If you dare cross her, she lowers her eyes innocently in seeming deference to your opinions--then mounts a campaign of passive-aggressiveness the likes of which would have made even Alexander the Great drop arms and surrender his troops.

And so it happens that Our Lady of Infinite Sacrifice (or Lady Macbeth--take your pick) relishes being the bearer of ill-tidings. You name it, everyone's ailments--including degrees of fever, cataracts, gout, kidney stones, depression, dyspepsia, etc.--along with their financial setbacks, unwanted pregnancies, and myriad other human dramas, is the stuff of conversation. She lays in wait for us to come home from work and accosts us in the courtyard with the latest tales of woe regarding neighbors or family-members. And while it is true that Italians love to discuss illness as much as the English like to talk of the weather, her capacity for ill-omen is unparalleled.

I tell you all this, dear Readers, because this past Sunday morning as soon as we opened our shutters (thus signifying that we were awake, up, and about) she appeared at our door, like a raven, her hands clamped together in what was either meekness or glee, with an air of wistful sadness, and informed us that our 94 year-old neighbor, Ottavino, had died during the night. She proceeded to recount verbatim his wife Lisetta's mournful ululations, and speculated about whether or not she'd now be put into a casa di cura by her daughter, or given over to the care of one those immigrant slave-girls called badanti.  She lingered at our doorstep, eyes downcast, shoulders shrugged at the inevitability of death, nursing homes, and thankless children--savoring her words and the moment.

The ancient Greeks coined the term catharsis--meaning (theatrically speaking) that in order to fully experience their tragedies on the stage, one necessarily entered into the unfolding drama, as it were, and emerged emotionally cleansed. Perhaps my mother-in-law--through her obsession with the calamities and misfortunes of others--is merely purging herself of her own latent fears and frustrations. Perhaps her behavior is harmless enough--however morbid--and I'm a wicked, wicked woman to suspect her of ulterior sentiments.

But be assured of one thing, dear Readers--I watch my back around that little gray-haired, chintz-covered goblin. Because how she really feels about having a wilful, outspoken, independent-minded American daughter-in-law is anybody's guess.


My best regards,

Campobello

(*photo credit: above, Maria Callas as Medea in the film by Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Disparate housewives

Dear Readers,

"I could never move to Italy--it's too much work!!" said a friend of mine a while back (note: said friend is a proud, card-carrying self-proclaimed Jewish American Princess). And she's right, of course. If you are a typical Italian wife, whether or not you're a casalinga or have a job outside the home--you work your ass off.

With Christmas approaching, I dread the yearly discussion of ironing which is inevitably brought up by my sisters-in-law at some point during the feast. Florence winters are notoriously damp and clothes hung on the line take forever to dry, thus laundry typically morphs to monstrous proportions. (No one has clothes dryers. No one, that is, except this die-hard). And since Italian women iron everything--even underwear--this means gargantuan mountains of clothes lying about already-cramped homes, waiting to be wrinkle-free and, if not snuggly-soft, at least not as rough as Velcro. Call them masochists, but it seemingly never occurs to these women to just, maybe, ease up a bit and let that t-shirt or pair of briefs go forth into the world with a crinkle or two. And so my sisters-in-law blather on and on: "Goodness, I have so much ironing piled up! Oh my, me too, isn't it terrible? Mercy me, this weather isn't helping! At least spending a couple hours over a hot iron warms me up" Since I am, in this regard, iron-deficient, and since discussing housework is about as pleasant to me as oral surgery, I sit there silently cursing and brooding--like some female Mr Rochester--bored out of my skull, and wondering morosely if I should stuff another piece of panforte down my gullet.

Case in point: my sister-in-law Silvia works part-time, has three kids, and a husband who doesn't lift a finger to help her with housework or matters related to child-rearing (this is, alas, still fairly common among Italian men of a certain mindset and upbringing). My mother-in-law has told me that often Silvia stays up til 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, ironing. She also does all the laundry, cleans the house, cooks most of the meals, takes out the trash, and ferries the kids to doctor's appointments and such. We assume her husband wipes his own behind after going to the toilet, but we can't be sure.

My dear husband--whom I often think must have been adopted--told me that when he was a teenager, he informed his mother of his desire to do his own laundry and ironing. She was aghast with horror and disbelief. "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!" she yelled, when she caught him one night surreptitiously ironing his own clothes (in the living-room, in the dark). "That's for me to do!" she nearly wept, sensing that her entire raison d'etre was being snatched from her like the last bag of tortelli on special at the Coop.

At least her other son, Giorgio, is normal: when his wife is out of town, he dutifully drives his laundry across the city to Mamma's so she can wash, scrub out stubborn stains, iron, darn socks and replace buttons to her hearts' content.

Many italiane mop their homes (called "giving the rag," or dare il cencio) every single day. Seriously, you could eat off these floors, or perform complex surgeries on them without fear of infection. Often when walking along the street, I am showered in detritus as some old biddy on an upper floor shakes her dust cloth out the window. This past summer while at the beach, my American friend Kelly and I were endlessly entertained by our neighbor across the way--a lady "of a certain age", as they say here--cleaning her vacation home from top to bottom all day long, every day, while her husband sat on the terrace reading his newspaper. We were fascinated, and yet horrified. We couldn't tear our eyes away; it was like looking at a train wreck. "No, surely she'll stop now--my God, it's 110 degrees out!" She mopped the floor of the kitchen after every meal. She did laundry all the time, even though there was only the two of them. On her balcony was a full battery of cleaning products the likes of which we'd never seen outside of a hospital. Even her washing machine had a cozy to protect it and keep it from getting dirty. (We were surprised she didn't have one to put over her husband, who was about as animated as an armoir).

Bet you thought you'd seen it all

[As an aside, Kelly told me her Italian husband's grandmother used to starch and iron his dress shirts, fold them, wrap them individually in tissue paper, and stack them neatly in his wardrobe. She's in an insane asylum now.]

My husband and I recently left the kids with my mother-in-law when we went out on an errand. We had inadvertently left a basket of freshly-washed-and-dried laundry in the living-room. When we came back, we saw that she had folded everything with military precision, and it was lying in impossibly neat stacks in the laundry basket. I know it's unkind to say so, but I wanted to eviscerate her. Somehow the thought of her handling my undies (I'm 42 for God's sake!) made my skin crawl. But I know why she did it: she was bored. She can't just sit and do nothing. She can't just play a game or read a book with her grandchildren. She can't help herself, poor thing--it's a reflex, like genuflecting in church or giving candy to hyperactive children. I'm certain she would have ironed everything too, but my ironing board and iron are buried in the storage closet where no one--not even me--can find them.

Dear Readers, don't get me wrong, I don't want to live in a pigsty. I simply believe in moderation in all things. But I just don't understand this paradox even though I've lived in Italy going on 10 years now: where is la dolce vita when it comes to housework? Most Italian women don't seem to read, have hobbies (other than getting their hair done every week), or do any kind of recreational sports--so could it be that housework is their hobby? Their aerobic activity? Or is it a Catholic thing: guilt over leading Adam astray? Cleansing one's sins with rubber gloves, a mop bucket and a liter of Mastro Lindo?

I may never know. But I'll tell you this--the unwrinkled life is not worth living.

Yours, glorious dust bunnies and all,

Campobello