Commercialization of female body

Should you walk down the streets of any Italian town, whether big or small, you would be surprised by the overwhelming presence of advertising placards showing sexy ladies’ almost naked bodies. It does not matter whether the advertised object is a special glue, a car or a blender, what you can see is a beautiful woman in a provocative attitude trying to convince you that she has the object of your desire.
And it works.
The cradle of Latin culture seems to have left into oblivion its nobility in favour of a morbid and depraved taste in looking at naked breasts and bottoms to the point that, most of the times, people could not even tell what was the thing being promoted.
The situation gets even more distressing if we focus on television shows. Beautiful, young girls who pretend to be dancers or presenters, show their beauties in front of the voyeuristic eye of the camera which indulges on firm “b-sides”, as we call them. Moreover, in some soccer shows the hostess is usually a girl who has no idea of what she is talking about. But it does not matter. She is beautiful, men will forgive and forget her incompetence.
Where is this phenomenon leading us?
The consequences of such tendency are many, and alarming.
First of all, it is important to make a distinction between the effects that such female presence has on men and women, which are two different types of audience.
Probably, the programmes addressed to men will benefit from the presence of a young attractive girl, as TV rating data confirm.
Thus, while TV programme makers profit of the situation, a dramatic mechanism gets off the ground. The reiterated offer of female bodies which have nothing else but their beauty to show, leads men to consider all women as mere objects, empty wrappings.
Influenced by this idea, they will relate to all women in real, everyday life, as if they were relating to the girls they see on TV, in case these women are pretty; if they have the misfortune to be unpretty, they will never be given a chance.
This has a huge impact on the lives of women, since they are solely judged based on what they look like, even though the result is almost always the same: is she pretty? She will necessary be a stupid goose. Is she ugly? She is not even worth talking to.
But the commercialization of female body, also results in a deeper consequence: women start feeling uncomfortable in their own bodies. To see supermodels, slim, beautiful girls and women is frustrating, and even more frustrating is to see they are admired.
They become role models, the target to reach at any cost. Thus we see teens having recourse to cosmetic surgery, women wanting to look fifteen and tormenting their bodies until they look unnatural and fake.
Only to catch one more sight and feel appreciated.
We need to stop, “erase and rewind” to say it with the Cardigans’.
As I once suggested, re-education is needed. Re-educating men and boys to respect, re-educating women and girls about their intrinsic value.
Examples of ordinary, successful, intelligent, beautiful women should be given more room by mass media, so as to provide an alternative, and show a different way to be a woman exists and is possible.