Cheesy encounter

Nando didn't seem to mind that I was wearing baggy pants, a men's workshirt, and a Russian cap with a Lenin star on it. I wasn’t very attuned to bella figura in those days. Nor did he take notice of my lack of makeup or my stringy hair (four girls in a one-bathroom apartment meant that it wouldn't be my turn to wash my hair till later that day). He helped me negotiate the purchase of bread and cheese, and then asked if he might attend the party for which they were intended. "Nope," I shook my head breezily. "It's for students. Besides, you're too old."

Does the "bella" figura?

I work at home as a researcher-writer-translator, with most of my client contact done by phone and email. Once in a while I have to do a personal interview, but these are so few and far between that I have plenty of time to pull myself together -- the hair, the makeup, the right outfit and jewelry.  Okay, okay, the bella figura bit: when you gotta do it, you gotta do it.

But usually the people I interview don't care who I am, they want to do the interviews as fast as possible so they can get back to their "real" work. When I have a face-to-face encounter, some of them barely look up at me from their desks.

No return to beauty

I have seen bella figura in many guises. I have lived in Milan, the country’s business capital in Lombardy; in Bologna, the large regional capital of Emilia-Romagna; and in Treviso, a small provincial capital 12 miles from Venice. Right now I live in Busto Arsizio, Varese, Italy, a small city of about 100,000 some 20 miles north of Milan. It is a quintessential provincial city of Northern Italy.

Nevertheless, for me the onus of bella figura is a good reason NOT to do something. This obsession is all about appearance, surface, superficiality -- what other people think about you, not so much what you think about yourself. It’s a small town mentality blown up to country-wide proportions. In the U.S., maybe Hollywood and the fashion and cosmetics industries are obsessed with superficial externalities, but I am not.

Besides, I don't have the vanity pretensions of many women who started out as great beauties. I was never drop-dead gorgeous so I had no urge to return to something that never existed. My hair is a chemically-assisted brown, my eyes are brown, my figure could charitably be described as average, and I am short by current standards. I don’t want to resurrect a make-believe past, or attract younger men, or do as Pamela Harriman did when she pulled her face together so she could get herself a third husband (it worked for her, though).

It costs to be beautiful

I have never given a moment’s thought to my lack of resemblance to Monica Bellucci. In spite of having lived in Europe since 1986 (most of that time in Italy but eight years in Southern France) I don’t think Italian standards of beauty, or even bella figura, have a lot to do with me. Okay, I carry an Italian passport. Okay, Italy has more UNESCO-certified treasures than any other country in the world, meaning that the culture here knows a thing or two about beauty. Okay, Italian women spend more per capita on clothes, gold jewelry, watches, and furs than anyone else, so they have every reason to look better than the unfortunate mortals who were not born Italian. Bella figura permeates society, male and female alike. That’s why fashion designers wield such power here. That’s why women (and men!) generally take great pains with their appearance, even when going to the supermarket or walking their dog.

Bella figura

Angela likes to emphasize the fact that I live in Italy, "where EVERYTHING is bella figura." The term translates as "keeping up public appearances," but also applies to the literal figure they present. Italian women are more concerned with their figure than their face, and facelifts in Italy take a back burner to liposuction, breast implants and other body-based interventions. The one facial plastic surgery that is very popular in Italy is a nose job; maybe Roman noses aren’t as fashionable now as they were in ancient times?

The reason for the predominance of body-oriented cosmetic surgery is simple: if asked to name the defining element of their beauty, Italian women are likely to mention "elegance" or "style" more than a specific physical feature like eyes, teeth, or hair, and they follow the fashion trends of the moment more slavishly than their counterparts in other countries. Clothes look good on Italian women because they are well-built. They are taller and curvier than they were as recently as 20 years ago, as measured by the ratio between waist and hips, but they wear on average one size smaller than they did back then. They are also thinner than the European average, and about half as likely to be obese. In fact, they are in better shape than their French counterparts, in spite of the latter’s celebrity from the book "French women don’t get fat."

Much credit for this health and beauty is due to the famous "dieta Mediterranea", a diet emphasizing olive oil, complex carbohydrates such as pasta and rice, fresh fruit and vegetables, while low in red meat, animal fats and refined sugars. Junk food takes up entire aisles of American supermarkets; in Italy you have to look hard to find the junk food area. It exists, of course, and is expanding thanks to globalization, but is still a fraction of what you will find in the United States. The Mediterranean diet has a lot to do with good skin, attractive bodies, and general health: Italy’s population is the most aged in Europe, and Italian women live longer than women anywhere else on the continent.