Monopoly fights over the mermaid statue on the waterfront. And residents complain: “It’s too provocative”

“It’s too provocative.” Worse. «A mermaid with two silicone boobs to report to the surgeon, and above all a huge ass never seen in a mermaid. At least the ones I know.” Even if the doubt remains as to which sirens the author of the post of discord has ever seen, comments follow. All in the same tone. “She looks like Fiona from Shreck in a porn movie.” “Horrifying”. “Horrible”. «Mass appeal for body-tourism». And off we go. The target, once again, is a woman’s body. Specifically, that of a sculpture depicting a mermaid. It is located in Monopoli, in the square dedicated to the scientist Rita Levi Montalcini, and was created by the students of the Luigi Rosso artistic institute. There hasn’t been the official inauguration yet, but the echo of the country’s controversy has rebounded from the local newspapers and even reached the Guardian.

To defend the students’ creativity, the statue and even the right to have a “huge ass”, as the Bari-born actress Tiziana Schiavarelli wrote with questionable elegance in a post on Facebook, Adolfo Marciano, head teacher of the institute tried Louis Rosso. «There is no malice in the students’ work, but a tribute to the representation of reality, in this case of the female body. On television we see very thin women, but our siren is a tribute to the vast majority of women of our land, who are curvy” has explained. And then she invites you to shift your gaze, to delve deeper, because the mermaid is not the only statue the boys have worked on. There are also works dedicated to those who died at work. «It’s a very important message, the kids worked a lot. We invite you to follow the inauguration» said the headmaster.

Despite these reasonable and absolutely shareable arguments, one gets the impression that no one, neither in Monopoli nor elsewhere, will ever give to the dead at work the importance that is given to a butt. But why? The explanation is simple, because it is always the same. When is a nude woman not “too provocative”? When is he thin, when is he fat? The error always lies in the gaze, which confines a woman’s body always and only to her sexuality. It has never occurred to anyone to define the bottom of the Riace bronzes as too provocative, for one thing. Yet even that is a beautiful sight. The criticisms of the good work of the students of Luigi Rosso are instead a sad feeling, and repeating, always the same old story.