Italian ‘sexy shopping’ TV show suspended

AN ITALIAN television programme has been suspended after airing a tutorial showing a model in a skimpy outfit giving tips on how to look sexy and provocative in a supermarket in order to attract the attention of men.

Italian MPS called for RAI, the national broadcaster, to explain its thinking, while campaigners said it was highly offensive and put the cause of feminism in Italy back decades.

The programme was ridiculed on social media as representing hopelessly outdated views. The programme, Detto Fatto (Said and Done), featured Emily Angelillo, a pole dancing instructor, dressed in leather shorts and a crop top, demonstrating how to shop coquettishly. Reaching for an item on a high shelf, she said the action could be made more sexy by jauntily lifting one leg.

Women should use the aisles of a supermarket as a “stage” on which to attract the attention of men, she said.

Fabrizio Salini, head of RAI, said the programme was an “extremely serious” case of perpetuating sexist stereotypes and suspended it until further notice.

A culture of celebrating showgirls and starlets flourished when Silvio Berlusconi was in power in Italy for four periods between 1994 and 2011, but the casual sexism and objectification of women has begun to wane since.

Giulia Grillo, an MP from the Five Star Movement, which governs in coalition with the centre-left, called the segment “humiliating” to women.

MPS from the hard-right League party said in a statement: “It is unacceptable that the public broadcaster, which is funded by taxpayers, should air such a second-rate, low grade spectacle.”

An editorial in La Stampa newspaper remarked that it was reminiscent of the Fifties and encapsulated “every sexist stereotype one could imagine – it drags Italy back by 70 years and has justifiably prompted a storm on social media”.