Don’t just blame Noemi Letizia…
Even before the brouhaha over “Noemigate,” the scandal sparked by the nebulous liaison between Silvio Berlusconi, the septuagenarian Italian prime minister, and the teenaged Noemi Letizia, Italian women had been pondering their collective self-image. On television, the Italian penchant for adorning soundstages with skimpily clad, surgically enhanced showgirls has radically metastasized, spilling over from game shows to all forms of entertainment, including the nightly news. But feminist grumblings only exploded into public debate in recent weeks after reports emerged that Mr. Berlusconi, a media magnate whose family owns Italy’s three largest private television channels, was grooming a stable of TV starlets for the political arena. – from NYTimes