Anyone living in Italy...?

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PhuckYou

Italy...is that in europe?

Al M

I live in Italy, although I'm not Italian (born USA, lived in Scotland between ages of 21 and 51) and I have seen Stealing Beauty. It's a good film to watch if you want to see a bit of lovely Tuscan countryside nicely filmed. It's a good film to watch if you like to see quite a bit of an attractively nubile Liv Tyler. But you need to take everything about it with a huge pinch of salt.

First, consider that the little community in which the film is set is made up of artistic types from just about everywhere other than Italy. The director is not even trying to suggest that these people are typical of Italy.

Second, bear in mind that what the film is really about is the director's (Bernardo Bertolucci) late middle-aged take on how life should be lived and how sexuality should be dealt with.

Sexuality is indeed viewed differently in many parts of Europe than it is in the USA with it's lingering Puritanical hangups, but that does not mean that you see people having sex in the streets here. While regular church attendance is falling in a most encouraging way, Italy remains a Catholic country and it is very conservative in many ways.

However, that conservatism does not extend to prudery about the female body: there is a lot of bare flesh on display on beaches during the summer and there are quite a few women who wear revealing outfits during the rest of the year. There are men who make no attempt to conceal the fact that they like looking at attractive women and there are also a shockingly high proportion of married men who regularly visit prostitutes.

I don't see why any of those facts should do anything to prevent you visiting Italy. You'll be able to wear whatever you want and, unless you're sexily gorgeous on a Liv Tyler scale or end up by some chance in a very unsavoury area, it's highly unlikely you'll be propositioned or even have your bottom pinched in clichÃ© Italian style.

Still, if you do find those facts outrageous, then maybe it would be best for you to abandon your idea of visiting Italy and stay safely behind your white picket fence in Podunk, Ohio.

nevermind

Stealing Beauty was not an Italian film most of the cast was foreign and it was addressed to Americans [it flopped in most European countries].

Italy as the South of Europe in general has a healthy attitude towards sex, not prudish and not obsessed. The attitude is different because Italians don't make so much fuss about sex and their sex lives etc they just live them.

I think Americans and Anglo Saxons theorize too much about sex and seem stressed and preoccupied about it whether they do it or not.

islander on the boot

I'm an american expat living in Italy, and I can understand your misgivings regarding the portrayal of sex after seeing the movie (I actually loved it, by the way). The naked truth about italian culture, and european culture on the whole for that matter, is that sex is simply a part of being human, of living, of life itself. There's nothing taboo about it. They don't believe in the puritanical views that America has, which, I will have to admit, is rather hypocritical given the programs that you see on tv. I'm not saying that it's ALL they think about, only that since human sexuality is accepted as well, being human, they feel much more at ease in this most basic of needs per se.

Having said that, remember that it IS only a movie. Just be prepared for anything if you do visit one day. The general consensus is that northern italian men are less forward than their southern counterparts, although there will always be exceptions.

.Laura

No sex is just in any other part of Europe and men are not obsessed with sex either...the only difference is that here they "show" more if they fancy you but i dont think that sex got more importance here than elsewhere in Europe...actually lately is more the women who show more that...anyway in the average of other countries..about the fact to be virgin lately the age of the first sex in Italy is very getting low (14 age) but no one really make fun if you are still virgin...probably only your close friends but only if you let them

â“”â“›â“”â“â“

i live in italy. i'm italian. i'13 and I am virgin.
Stealing Beauty is only a film!!

Philip

I'm 100% italian...from venice!

Prague

I live in Italy.

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