American Girl in Italy, Florence, 1951. Copyright 1952, 1980 Ruth Orkin. Courtesy of Ruth Orkin Photo Archive.
That summer in Rome, “Volare” was being played on the radio night and day. Since I didn’t speak Italian, I translated the lyrics freeform:
“Volare, oh, oh, oh
Cantare, ah, ah, ah
Nel blu, dipinto di blu…”“Flying, oh, oh, oh,
Singing, ah, ah, ah
So blue the paint is so blue…”
Which is about as good as a translation can be.
After graduating from college and becoming engaged with a ring that was too expensive, I thought, and awkward to wear—sliding it around my finger in restaurants, it sometimes landed under the table—I was spending a month of a sort of pre-honeymoon with the man I was going to marry in the fall.
Propriety forbade us living together and so I was paying guest of a dour Roman journalist on a hilltop distant from the center of Rome where my fiancé was staying. Getting together required learning the bus system and walking, exposed to the extraordinary harassment from male bystanders that was a fixture of that time and place. It was not frightening—those men weren’t actually going to do anything but leer and catcall—but it was demeaning, my most dramatic experience of being objectified, another fixture of the ‘fifties which I never expected to change. No good old days, in my opinion.
Still, there were pleasant evenings having dinner with Italians in one of the big piazzas within earshot of an enormous fountain, twilights that seemed to go on forever till the lights came on and even then there was a dusky glow. I couldn’t understand a word of the conversation—my fiancé was studying Italian, and did—and I knew I had to be back at my pensione before ten when the dragon lady locked up and went to bed. Arriving late meant rousing her, a most unpleasant experience…
On the weekends we often drove to a nearby beach in my fiancé’s bright yellow convertible and spent delicious hours swimming and baking in the sun. It didn’t occur to me that the big pipe spilling sewage into the ocean fifty feet away was probably the cause of my infection, which a Roman doctor advised would be cured if I didn’t eat spicy food.
The infection was still bothering me when we took a ferry to Elba, the island where Napoleon had been imprisoned, to have lunch with a couple of retired American diplomats who seemed to be in charge of the place. It was my second learning experience. At lunch, I cut up my pasta instead of rolling it on my fork and realized from our hosts’ horrified expressions that I had just proved what they already suspected: I was an American girl barbarian.
I find it very useful to have learned these two lessons early: how it feels to be objectified, and how easily any woman, even today, finds herself treated like a barbarian.
And yet… And yet…
Thank God for romance! I still find myself singing “Volare” and thinking of those soft Roman evenings around the fountain. And the beautiful handmade underwear I bought, and the soft leather shoes—and the hope that springs eternal: that these moments will last.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that longevity is not the point of an experience or of a relationship. Now that women can generally travel anywhere alone with only a little harassment, now that antibiotics seem to have curbed all kinds of infections, now that I know how to roll pasta on my fork, I remember how beautiful it all was, and part of its beauty is its ephemeral nature.
And I rejoice in the fact that a young woman I know believes “American Girl in Italy” was staged and that the girl, Ninalee Craig, later argued that the photo proved her independence.
And that romance, one way or another, always endures, as the woman in a restaurant here proved last night. She’d overheard our discussion about the problems with Gone With The Wind and came over to tell us it was her all-time favorite movie.
And that the sewer pipe spewing into the ocean at the beach near Rome has probably long since been capped.
And that I go on singing “Volare.”
[For more on my time in Italy that summer, please see Volare (2018).]
I love the scene you paint with such detailed phrases. And rolling our pasta. Boy, wasn’t that a big deal! Thank you for sharing this delightful slice of your life. Had me wondering if the young man got you to the altar. Signing up for more, Sallie. Susan in Taos NM
A good idea — one of your comments chosen for each month of the year. I don’t have time right now to read them all, but read the one that so struck my eye that I had to scroll back to that one and have a looksee. I was intrigued by the way you said “the man I was going to marry”, and like the other woman who left a comment, your story left me wanting to hear the rest. And, oh, yes. I know that picture. It raises every hackle I have and makes me want to go along beside her (any of us) down that sidewalk with a band of warrior women and confront every male in the picture, one by one, making every one of them stop, stand up straight, clean out their minds, faces and bodies, listen to why what they are doing is hateful, pure disrespect, never to be repeated, until each is completely ashamed of themselves and genuinely determined to stop such mean and demeaning treatment of females. Alas . . . . .
Not long ago a woman with a prominent tv show showed a young woman in NYC, I think it was, walking along the city’s streets, showing men’s reactions to a quite ordinary young woman just going along. I don’t recall now whether she was filmed in this by the young man who did this experiment with her, walking behind her as if not associated with her and not letting the camera show or whether she had a camera in her backpack. But when this was shown on the woman’s tv show, she said she didn’t know why the girl would have been offended by the men’s behavior. That, now that she thought about it, she’d have been complimented by what the men were doing, that she’d have taken it as a compliment. My jaw dropped. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that “picture” either. This is what came to mind when you added the claim of the woman in the picture with your comment, that it hadn’t bothered her.
Your other monthly comments will be on hold until I can get to them.