G20 Girls: The pressure on young Italian females to look like showgirls

She posed for a series of suggestive photographs and dropped them off at Mediaset, the company owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Mediaset has made kitsch, titillation and long-legged showgirls the defining features of Italian television.

When Berlusconi suddenly showed up at Noemi’s 18th birthday last year, it caused a national scandal. Berlusconi’s wife filed for divorce, saying she could no longer stomach her husband “consorting with minors.”

Noemi’s much gossiped-about relationship with Berlusconi is exceptional. But her dream of fame through barely concealed buttocks and breasts is one shared by many Italian girls.

Italian television has been widely denounced for spreading the “terrible message” to girls that “the way to success is with their body, never their brain,” as businesswoman Lorella Zanardo has put it.

To make her point, Zanardo produced a 25-minute film — a collection of clips from the many TV variety shows that use showgirls as nothing more than eye candy. It’s a parade of stiletto heals, bouncing bikinis, revealing lingerie, wet T-shirts and close ups of enhanced breasts.

Zanardo’s film, Il corpo delle donne (The Body of Women), has been viewed more than 1.3 million times on her website. She also screens it in high schools across Italy, where she inevitably finds a disturbing number of girls raising their hands when asked who wants to become a velina — the Italian word for showgirl.

In her recent book, Appena ho 18 anni mi rifaccio (As Soon as I’m 18 I’m Getting a Makeover), author Cristina Sivieri Tagliabue interviewed dozens of image-obsessed girls counting on plastic surgery to give them the showgirl look.

A national survey last year by the SWG polling firm found 36 per cent of Italian girls under 18 are unhappy with the way they look, and 17 per cent are specifically unhappy with their breasts. Fourteen per cent of teenagers between 16 and 17 said they would consider plastic surgery, the survey found.

Concerned about the growing number of girls getting breast implants, Italy’s health undersecretary, Francesca Martini, introduced a bill in February banning girls under 18 from getting breast surgery that has no medical basis. (Currently, minors can get breast enlargements with the consent of parents.)

“At the moment we have a Wild West, cowboy style system of plastic surgery for young women and this must stop,” Martini said.

Some observers note that if Martini really wants to help girls have a healthier self-image, she should call on her boss, the Italian prime minister, to change the way women are portrayed on the several private and public television channels he controls.