Abstract

The paper focuses on the relation between sexual difference and the media in contemporary Italian culture. Our starting point is that the use of women's bodies in Italian TV has recently become a political issue. The argument stresses the complexity of this relation and the risk of reification of the category "women". It also underlines the fact that gender and representation are historically mutually constructed, constantly produced and entwined with power, desire, and subjectivity. Starting from a critique of the much discussed documentary video "Il corpo delle donne", the paper tries to look at sexism in the Italian media within the wider frame of racism and homophobia that grow rampant in today's Italy.