Male Identity Crisis
June 20, 2008
With female economic independence has come a new dilemma. Men worldwide are undergoing a male identity crisis and none more so than the macho Italian man. Getting a haircut in Rome, I overhead an Italian waiting his turn and leafing through Corriere dello Sport say: “We are all men here, I can be frank. Our women have become independent-minded, they all go out to work, they don’t cook so much any more, we have to look after ourselves. We are second-class citizens.”
To cheer him up I gave the thumbs up to Fabio Capello, who took over the England football squad, a fine example of Italian manhood: elegant, sharply dressed, supremely confident, a born winner, who even liked modern art.
To the outside world, and not least to Brits, Capello looks like the new breed of Italian male. Not only has he been happily married man for 40 years, no dalliances on the side have been discovered so far, likes Bach and jazz, reads philosophy, goes to Mass, spends his holidays exploring archaeological ruins in Tibet or Colombia instead of chatting up women on the beach, collects Kandinskys and Chagalls, and cultivates Rome’s modern artists. Indeed, a far, far cry from the unscrupulous Lotharios of old.
But, it doesn’t look quite that way to Italian men. They still have a sneaking admiration for old-style Casanovas with a buccaneering style, a penchant for risqué jokes and an eye for the ladies. Their ideal of macho manhood is Marcello Mastroianni, the actor with matinée-idol looks who made an art of appearing debonair, louche and charming.
But, Mastroianni is dead and so is the dolce vita Federico Federi embodied so well in his films. Many Italian men feel sorry for themselves in 21st century Italy i.e. they feel browbeaten, overworked and underpaid. Even the famous Latin lover is exposed as a myth: as according to a survey six out of ten Italian women claim to be sexually dissatisfied with their husbands, partners or lovers. Chiara Simonelli, a sexologist at Rome University Hospital claims many women in their thirties and forties are opting for celibacy in despair.
Another survey suggests Italian men have lost the art of picking up women, including foreign tourists, at beach resorts or in bars and pavement cafés. Death of the gigolo ran one headline.
And yet, beneath all the gloom and self-pity, many Italian men still believe they were born to run the world and to be admired, simply because their mothers tell them so. While, more Italian women are making careers and scoring belated victories for feminism, they as mammas still dote on their male offspring, just as they always have.
So, it not surprising that Italy’s mamma’s boys still think they are God’s gift to women. As for feminism, every Italian newsstand is festooned with 2008 calendars depicting naked models and ‘showgirls’. It is invariably the women who ‘make sacrifices’ to ease the strains of daily life, and so while there may be a men’s identiy crisis the world over, the lot of the Italian man is not so bad, after all.
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