Italian Men Don’t Like Exposure In The Media Naked Outrage Over Paparazzi Photos Of Prominent Men
When is it rude to shoot a nude? For Italian men, it seems the line is crossed when the camera turns in their direction.
A peculiar ruckus has flared in the Italian media after the paparazzi pack decided to become manhunters. Shots of male politicians and performers caught with their pants down have led to earnest discussions about privacy and propriety in a country where surreptitious photos of naked women are a summertime fixture in the press.
Author Umberto Eco skewered the “serious media” for running the photos of naked male celebrities.
“They are like moralists who are surprised in a bordello and say they are there just to view the low life of the world,” he wrote in the latest issue of L’Espresso.
L’Espresso did not share Eco’s distress. In the same issue, it reprinted a shot of a political party leader, Pierferdinando Casini, naked and drying himself with a towel aboard a yacht.
“I want to see all the paparazzi in the cemetery,” said television game show host Alberto Castagna, who was photographed changing into his bathing suit.
Other uncovered subjects have included actor Roberto Benigni urinating behind a bush, Premier Lamberto Dini walking in the woods without a shirt, and Giuliano Ferrera, a bulky conservative political adviser, sunning on a boat deck in skimpy shorts.
Most of the photos have first appeared in Italy’s chatty celebrity-driven magazines. But many have been reprinted in newspapers and news magazines - to the satisfaction of some women.
“For the first time it’s men,” said actress Eleonora Giorgi. “For them it’s a new thing and they are upset because they feel less powerful being shown nude.”
“Now it’s the men’s turn,” added Veronica Pivetti, an aspiring entertainer and sister of the president of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.
All the eyebrow raising is an appropriate encore to last month’s nudity tempest. Italian media dissected the merits and meaning a nude male model appearing during Valentino’s Paris fashion show.
The same model, American Charles Andrews, was then featured during a Rome show wearing a chiffon loincloth.
Even the Vatican couldn’t stay silent. It’s official newspaper called the commercial use of nudity “rationally disgusting.”