The beauty of a woman is only skin-deep. If men could only see what is beneath the flesh and penetrate below the surface with eyes like the Boetian lynx, they would be nauseated just to look at women, for all this feminine charm is nothing but phlegm, blood, humours, gall. Just imagine all that is hidden in nostrils, throat and stomach… We are all repelled to touch vomit and ordure even with our fingertips. How then can we ever want to embrace what is merely a sack of rottenness?
–Abbot Odo of Cluny, 10th Century
My preceding post put me in the mind of this quote and makes me thinking deeply once more about the Churches patriarchal power games with the female body. Seeing copious icons of the Virgin Mary in Firenze alongside the sexed up female portrayal in Italian media I have become tantalized by the polarized roles that women play in this Catholic country.
I recall my first night in Italy, watching Miss Italia 2010 on the little hostel television. I watched it with the same intrigue as Levi-Strauss studying a Hopi dance; noting down the performers alien movements and curious costumes. But unlike the Hopi snake dance the Miss Italia contestants’ actions were hollow, they went through the motions of seduction dance but their soul seemed disconnected. While living in Italy I’ve found the same awkward sexed up women selling mobile phones, as performers assistants, as magazine show co-hosts – bounding onto the stage, jiggling their breasts and bum before introducing the next part of the program.
But despite this playful tease of flesh that one could read as ‘girl power’, the women here seem to have little autonomy over their own bodies. My flat mate over breakfast tells me that women here in Italy are forbidden to artificially inseminate.
