Women’s bodies
Sunday, September 26, 2010, Lorella Zanardo’s presentation will be the closing event of the 7th International Women’s Fiction Festival.

The event will be held at Mediateca of the Provincial Library of Matera, at 11:15 am. Tiziana Lo Porto, journalist, the Honorable Vincenzo Viti and Lorella Zanardo, author of "Il corpo delle donne" (Women’s Bodies) and creator of a documentary of the same name will be discussing about the "Women's Bodies". Both the Regional Councilwoman for Equality of Opportunity, Maria Anna Fanelli, and the Provincial Councilwoman for Equality of Opportunity, Antonia Giaccia, will be participating in the discussion.

For too many years, Italian women have remained silent. Luckily, the author of “Women’s Bodies” has decided to talk. She’s rebelling against the tyranny of the mass media, showing in her documentary on the misuse of women’s bodies the selfsame images used on TV and which are a daily humiliation and degradation of the dignity of women. "How can Italian women stand watching TV programs that are deeply humiliating to them?" asks Lorella Zanardo. "How can they have somehow silently internalized this male ideal of beauty and how can they put up with working more hours than any other nationality of women in Europe?" Ms. Zanardo carefully follows all the many comments made by readers of her blog ilcorpodelledonne.net and it has become clear to her that Italian women remain silent only in the public sphere. In private,  very profound changes are under way, changes that neither society nor politics fully grasps. As Ms. Zanardo puts it: "The documentary was my way of raising the awareness of women, of stimulating them and where possible of coming to a deeper understanding of the profound damage caused by TV; the book also tackles issues of coming up with a concrete way to teach girls and young women to look at the media with a critical eye: 'A New Look at TV' is a sort of curriculum on how to effect change, concretely and immediately.” “Il Corpo delle Donne” is more than a manifesto, more than a mere description of the struggle against the arrogance of television: It is first and foremost the story of a woman who has finally said enough!  to the abuse by the media of women’s bodies.

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