Italian Blonds – Another Perspective Italy's obsession with fair hair has deep roots By Emily Liz Helgersen Some years ago a paternal uncle of mine was having trouble with his wife. She had become very difficult to deal with, constantly complaining and criticizing and, to add insult to injury, letting her appearance go downhill with too much food and too little exercise. So why did he marry her in the first place? “Because she was a blond,” was my father's response. Was she particularly pretty? “Not really, but in Sicily a beautiful dark-haired girl gets less attention than an ugly blond.” As a brunette of medium attractiveness, I resolved never to go to Sicily (my father's homeland) to find a husband. Perhaps fair hair is prized there because it is extremely rare past childhood. In its April 2006 issue Urban Mozaik reprinted an article entitled “Sicilian Blonde,” by Maria Luisa Romano, which detailed the obsession some Sicilian men have for the “fair” sex. I soon learned, though, that this fascination extends to all Italy and boasts a long and illustrious history. ___________________________ “A beautiful dark-haired girl gets less attention than an ugly blond.” ____________________________ The blond craze apparently dates back to Roman times. Many wealthy Roman women tinted their hair blond, either via dyes concocted with goat fat and beech tree ashes or a caustic soap called “spuma caustica.” Some of these potions had unwanted side effects: the poet Ovid in his work Amores (Loves) speaks of a woman whose hair fell out due to the harshness of the rinses she used on it. As Rome expanded, a new source of blondness was discovered: wigs made from the hair of women captured in the Empire's northern territories. (Of note, my above-mentioned aunt lived in Sicily, but her family was originally of German and Slovenian descent.) Says Ovid to his temporarily bald companion: “Now Germany will send you some slave-girl's hair.” Upper-class ladies were not the only ones to go blond. Prostitutes were required by law to bleach their hair blond or wear wigs of that colour. Practical people that they were, the Romans realized they could never eradicate the world's oldest profession, so they decided to make a profit from it by taxing its practitioners. It was therefore important to distinguish prostitutes from the general female population in order to collect this revenue. Fair hair continued to be esteemed during Italy's medieval and Renaissance periods. High-society Italian women often embraced blondness by using wigs or, more commonly, colouring their hair with dyes similar to those in Roman times. Not everyone looked on this trend with favour. Clerics saw it as the work of the Devil: for example, the Franciscan preacher Saint Bernardino of Siena (after whom the city in California was named) railed against bogus blonds in some of his public sermons. Ironically, one of the most famous Italian blonds was a townswoman of Bernardino, St. Catherine of Siena, a mystic who lived in the fourteenth century. An ascetic who reportedly survived on little more than a piece of lettuce a day, Catherine consecrated her virginity to Christ and resolved to renounce the “world.” Her family had other ideas, however, and wanted to marry her off. Catherine foiled this plan by cutting off her beautiful golden hair to discourage potential suitors. The trick seems to have worked, for she remained single throughout her thirty-three years of life. Blonds also make an appearance in Italian art and literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Both Beatrice and Laura, the beloveds of poets Dante and Petrarch respectively, are described as such. Artists such as Raphael and Fra Angelico portray the Virgin Mary as a blond, although it is highly unlikely that the real Mary, a Middle Eastern woman, had light-coloured hair. Likewise in his painting The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli depicts the goddess with long honey locks. In modern times blonds have made it big in Italy's entertainment industry. While most of the Italian actresses who have gained fame abroad have been brunettes – like Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and Monica Bellucci (who played Mary Magdalene in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ) – within Italy the film industry seems to have a thing for blonds, even if I suspect many of them acquired that status with the aid of a bottle. Such actresses include Sandra Milo (in Federico Fellini's 8½), Monica Vitti (in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura) and “showgirl” Heather Parisi (originally Italian-American, now a resident of Italy). Then we have actress-turned-talk-show-hostess Raffaella Carrà, who bears an uncanny resemblance to another platinum-haired announcer in a blond-poor country: Brazil's Xuxa. ___________________________ Blonds have made it big in Italy's entertainment industry ____________________________ Beyond the big screen, beauty contests (which are major national events in Italy) also feature a disproportionate number of flaxen-haired women. A newspaper reporter described the competitors in the 1985 Miss Italy pageant, for example, as principally “tall and blond.” Curiously, a blond of Italian descent, Irene Saenz, won the title of Miss Venezuela and subsequently Miss Universe; she later embarked on a career in politics. Returning to the story that began this essay, I must ask the question: do blonds in Italy really have more fun? My other male family members don't appear to share my uncle's predilection for blonds. My father, for instance, doesn't have anything in particular against them, but the women he married – my mother and then my stepmother – both happen to be brunettes. Similarly, though my brother has dated blond girls in the past, his present wife has a very nice reddish-brown hair colour. I myself have never had the pleasure of being blond. I did not have light-coloured hair as a child, unlike both my parents and my brother (though in all three cases their hair darkened by the teen years). I've bleached my chestnut brown hair red and streaked it, yet I've never been a full-fledged blond. But now that my hair is greying with age, I might just pick up the hair dye bottle and become a (part)-Italian blond. Readers who see my picture below may wish to advise me on the wisdom of this idea. Emily Liz Helgersen is a secretary and musician based in Canada. When she's not busy with her job, social activities and hobbies, she likes to write about religion, music, culture or anything else that happens to strike her fancy. 'Italian Blondes' is her latest article. You can contact Emily at ehelgersen@hotmail.com This website: Copyright © 2007 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.