Francesca Chillemi’s sky-blue swimsuit probably clinched it. Four million people watched — or ogled — as the bright-eyed, dark-skinned 18-year-old Sicilian was crowned Miss Italy last week.
But in the tiny town of Piobbico, in the eastern Marches region, tradition has it that when the parade of leggy girls starts on television it’s time to change channel.
This medieval town proudly declares itself the World Capital of Ugly People. There is even a road sign to tell visitors they are entering the ugly zone.
‘I’m ugly. My nose is small and snubby. But if you ask me, the uglier the better,’ said Telesforo Iacobelli, President of Piobbico’s Club dei Brutti — the Ugly Club. His nose has been the bane of his life in a country where large noses have been fashionable since toga-wearing times.
Iacobelli’s cult of ugliness, which began 40 years ago as a dating agency for over 100 Piobbico women who could not find a husband, has attracted 25 000 followers around the world. Its members carry ‘Ugliness is a Virtue, Beauty is Slavery’ ID cards, which rank their degree of ugliness, from ‘insufficient’ to ‘exceptional’. Supreme cases qualify for the Nobel prize.
‘I am not generous with my awards,’ he chortles. ‘You have to really earn them.’
Iacobelli’s fun and games were inspired by a serious problem in a country where bella figura (looking good) is the key to success.
‘There’s something very wrong with a society where no one loves you if you’re not beautiful. If you’ve got a good body you can go far in this country. If you have not, you’ve got a problem. I’ve seen so many people suffer for it.”
Iacobelli has made it his mission to ‘out’ people who are afraid they will spoil the scenery if they step outside. He says he has even written to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi urging him to stop championing beauty as a reason to work harder.
Iacobelli was inspired by a fresco in Piobbico’s thirteenth-century castle, showing the god Vulcan, the mythical protector of ugliness, who was thrown off a cliff by his mother because he was too ugly, but went on to marry Venus, the goddess of love. He has found records of an earlier ‘president of the ugly’ elected in 1879.
Iacobelli has dragged many onto television to break the national taboo. In 1996, he mounted a mock wedding between the then Miss Bellissima and Italy’s fattest man, Giuliano Bellesi. Young men and women come to him, often desperate, some even suicidal because the opposite sex will not look at them.
But he is facing an uphill battle. The cult of the body beautiful is thriving in a culture where each person watches on average four hours of television each day.
‘Every kind of communication comes with a nearly naked girl,’ said Fulvio Carbone, a psychologist who advises the makers of the Miss Italy TV show. ‘People think that you can reach a certain social status by exposing your body.’
‘The idea of ”bella figura” is the one thing, along with football, that all Italians believe in,’ said Franco Ferrarrotti, one of Italy’s best known sociology professors.
‘Everyone feels the pressure to be distinguished in some way. The Club dei Brutti are trying to claim their own kind of distinction.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â