Between the public and the private dimension

Although photography has always had a public dimension, being a ‘representation, in the various senses of expression’ (Grazioli Reference Grazioli, Luna, D’Autilia and Criscenti2006, 243), the display and sharing of a personal image has been subject to very precise rules. As emerges from Silvia Salvatici’s analysis of Lei, an illustrated magazine that helped to give a new social value to photogenicity and spread a concept of beauty that reflected a cinematographic specificity (Vigarello Reference Vigarello2004, 211), in 1937 this magazine suggested to its female readers some good rules for the circulation of their portraits: ‘A lady, a young lady, never give [sic] their photograph to a man who is not a close relative or advanced in age; never, in any way, to people known occasionally and superficially’ (Salvatici Reference Salvatici, Franchini and Soldani2004, 121).

Stubbornly resisting these prescriptions which were in line with those traditionally imposed by families - the Church and public institutions, hundreds of girls sent their photographs to magazines to make them public: in other words, to be seen and ‘discovered’. This large number, which increases if we also consider those who only wrote, reveals not only how widespread the desire to become a movie star was among young Italian women, but also invites us to reflect on the dynamic between the public and the private within an agony column. In fact, the confessions were usually limited to direct dialogue with friends or relatives and only secondarily expressed in writing, but the readers also entrusted the column with their image, a gesture of even greater intimacy. Sometimes the senders used a pseudonym to maintain their anonymity, but this condition was not guaranteed if the letter contained a photograph, let alone a close-up. Readers thus considered the column editor as a confidante,Footnote ¹⁸ even as a friend. Whoever responded obviously reinforced this impression, as in the issue of 20 June 1939, when the column was handed over to ‘Il Cineasta’; partly because the latter was a male figure, the magazine considered it appropriate to renew the invitation to intimate confidence, assuring that this was the only way for the dreams of the ‘dear [male] readers [and] cherished female readers’ to become reality. However, the relationship that developed in the pages of the agony column was not limited to two people alone; linked by shared consumption practices, all readers felt involved in the intimate correspondence.

Printed in an illustrated magazine with a wide circulation, the photographs of ‘ordinary girls’ seem to evoke that intermediate space (between ‘frontstage and ‘backstage’) that Joshua Meyrowitz refers to in his analysis of electronic media (mainly television), but which I believe can also be used to analyse the advice columns and the public dissemination of photographs of ‘ordinary people’ in the late 1930s, albeit with due distinctions of context and media. The display – especially in film magazines – of the stars’ lives and behaviour ‘behind the scenes’ (or ‘backstage’) alongside ‘stage’ (literally) photographs exposed their true selves beyond their stage roles, while the public sharing of the private was normalised.Footnote ¹⁹ In other words, film magazines revealed and, above all, showed the real behaviour of, stars, potentially provoking the imitation of informal attitudes (Meyrowitz Reference Meyrowitz1995, 155).

Moreover, as Meyrowitz observed, ‘if actors are no longer able to keep their backstage behaviour separate from their frontstage behaviour, they lose not only certain aspects of their privacy, but partially also their ability to portray their stage roles’ (1995, 76). The overlap, and in some respects the confusion, between public and private space may have led some female readers to underestimate or not fully grasp the public nature of the ‘private gesture’. The publication of the photographs undoubtedly had an impact on the everyday lives of the subjects portrayed, who had to come to terms with a public self-representation that – as we will see – was often far removed from the models proposed by Fascism, in which they would no longer have been considered credible (or at least not entirely), and that were more generally considered appropriate for a ‘good girl’. Perhaps this is why ‘Luciana Z.’ from Ferrara requested an assessment of her image but not its publication. Peverelli responded with irony: if the girl was worried how her fellow citizens’ would react to her appearance in Cine illustrato, what could she possibly expect if they saw her ‘on the big screen?’Footnote ²⁰

The pictures inevitably provoked reactions from everyone: parents, relatives, friends and strangers. Among the female readers, they may have activated processes of convergence and standardisation, but also of distancing and reproach, all made possible by ‘mediated visibility’ (Thompson Reference Thompson1995), which is not bound by the sharing of space and time, and which allows ‘a huge number of people dispersed in different places [to] share knowledge and emotions, and, even at a great distance from each other, [to] live the same experience, the same cultural process, simultaneously’ (Gagliardi Reference Gagliardi and Albanese2022, 272). As Alessio Gagliardi has written, ‘an intensification of relationships’ occurred, especially between peers or – we could perhaps say – between members of the same target group, for example, girls in Kodak’s launch of the camera as an essential commodity in an emerging leisure culture (Cross Reference Cross, West and McAllister2023, 16). Familiarity with the intermediate visual culture of cinema also gave young female readers of illustrated magazines the ability to evaluate a good photograph, decipher it and adapt it to their individual context (Ashkenazi Reference Ashkenazi2022, 1610).

As a result of the introduction and widespread dissemination of photographs of ‘ordinary people’, many situations were redefined and new boundaries in social relations were established. In response to the Fascist project of making public space entirely political, the film media of the time, including Cine illustrato, worked towards the same mixture, but in what we could call the opposite direction: public space was invaded by the private dimension, first that of the stars, then that of their fans. The idea of ‘the right private and public styles of behaviour’ (Meyrowitz Reference Meyrowitz1995, 229) was, then, strongly conditioned by the intermediate visual film culture.

‘Voi e il cinema’ became a social space populated mainly by young Italians, where there was no place – at least visually – for adults. These images thus represented a zone of autonomy in which a sense of self emerged that was defined by age,Footnote ²¹ shared consumption practices and aspirations, and common behaviour, of which photography was not only a consistent and integral part; as Lucie Ryzova (Reference Ryzova2015, 227) has observed, it also created new social practices based on the presence of the camera itself and on the fact that the reader had seen the poses of the stars. Such practices allowed for the creation and enactment of multiple selves that had to be photographed in order to exist (Ryzova Reference Ryzova2015, 231). Furthermore, ‘Voi e il cinema’ suggested that social identity, traditionally linked to kinship, class, conventions of respectability and sexual codes, could be constructed if one wanted to.

Even more than the photographic shot, the desire to make it public shows that the readers of Cine illustrato had turned their private spaces into ‘Little Theatres of Self’ (Edwards Reference Edwards2004) so as to embody a self that they perceived as modern. By sending in their photographs and then seeing them published, the girls wanted to become part of what Giovanni Fiorentino has called ‘[a]n integrated system that sees the photographic image at the centre of an endless series of exchanges and remediations’ (2013, 13). Although Fiorentino refers to the 1950s, I believe that this idea can also be applied to ‘Voi e il cinema’ in the sense indicated by Forgacs and Gundle (Reference Gundle2007), according to whom there was a certain continuity of mass consumption from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. The availability of a visual repertoire of behaviour and consumption, accessible even to non-readers, allowed the readers to place their images in relation to ‘a cultural system of reference, recognising its protagonists and elaborating models, values and consumption behaviour’ (Forgacs-Gundle Reference Gundle2007, 67). The faces and bodies of ‘ordinary girls’ thus became part of a ‘visual grammar’ nurtured by ‘the reciprocal mutation between the film set and everyday life’ (Fiorentino Reference Fiorentino and Anania2013, 28), which seemed to give them a certain degree of fame. In September 1943, for instance, ‘Maria M.’ from Genoa boasted that she had already appeared in Tempo for the ‘Una dote per un sorriso’ competition and that the picture had earned her no less than 570 letters, attesting to an undisputed admiration.Footnote ²² How could Cine illustrato – her request implied – renounce the privilege of also publishing her image?

Although the ‘symbolic promotion of the ordinary girl’ had not yet become ‘a recurrent reason for national pride’, the photographs published in ‘Voi e il cinema’ – where the private dimension entered the public one – clearly testify to personal ambitions and to the ‘need to talk and talk about oneself’ (Fiorentino Reference Fiorentino and Anania2013, 30).

‘Voi’ and the Fascist models

Many of the photographs published in the pages of ‘Voi e il cinema’ seem to have been taken from holiday or leisure photo albums, in the sense that they do not appeare to have been taken for a magazine. By contrast, the composition and execution of others may imply this specific purpose or, at least, suggest a more explicit public intention, having been taken in a photographic studio. In 1943, some of the pictures are accompanied by photographic credits, which shows that the ritual had become professionalised. I have focused on the images that come across as being more studied and arranged, because they can be considered performances, new ‘stage behaviours’ that the ‘ordinary girls’ were somehow constructing, redefining Fascist models, imitating stars and appropriating the use of their bodies and faces, following the examples they had seen and studied in their favourite magazine and, more widely, in the visual culture of the time. These photographs can offer a useful point of comparison with the ‘processes of incorporation’ described by Forgacs and Gundle (Reference Gundle2007, 97), as well as with Comand’s analysis of imitation and emulation. Following Hansen (Reference Hansen1991), Comand points out that cinema, in addition to making women visible to society, simultaneously ‘made women’s bodies visible to women themselves’ (2019, 31). The portraits of girls published in Cine illustrato – which can be leafed through, cut out, assembled and studied over and over again (Comand and Mariani Reference Comand and Mariani2018) – demonstrate how cinematography encouraged girls to act,Footnote ²³ to work on their image, to see themselves as different and multifaceted individuals, and to represent themselves as more than just a face.

Those pictures with a higher level of professionalism, elaboration and invention may, then, be closer to an ‘ideal’ representation of the self than a window onto the girls’ everyday lives, even if we can still catch a glimpse of the latter.Footnote ²⁴ Imitation is not considered a merely passive act, since it involves negotiating and transforming social and gender identities (Jerslev Reference Jerslev1996). A ‘glossy’ image can immortalise the escape into fantasy and give substance to the subject’s dreams, to the invention of a different self.Footnote ²⁵ By offering young women the chance to see their picture in a magazine and to be seen by others, ‘Voi e il cinema’ somehow returned the readers’ desires and secret aspirations in visual form, allowing them to share a dimension consubstantial with film stars: ‘[F]irst, stars are recorded people’ (Castles 2007, 25). On the other hand, as Stuart Ewen has observed, it is the photography of the star itself that appeals to ‘transcendent desires’, locating those desires ‘within a visual grammar which is palpable, which looks real, which invites identification by the spectator, and which people tend to trust (1993, 114).

Hence, based on the poses that were studied, arranged or anyway were selected for sending in, we can say that they rarely refer to public Fascist models (De Grazia Reference De Grazia1993; Dogliani Reference Dogliani2008), mainly because from an aesthetic point of view, Fascism struggled to provide young women with role models. As is well known, the regime tried to suppress any expressions of modern femininity, such as the garçonne or the ‘crisis woman’; thin and neatly dressed, often blonde, unburdened by children, cosmopolitan, reserved and vaguely androgynous, she was the complete opposite of what Victoria De Grazia has called the ‘authentic woman’, a ‘native brood-mare, mother and true companion’ (1993, 287). However, because it was difficult to make that model visually seductive, the florid peasant girl was chosen as the emblem of Fascist beauty, an image widely publicised in the press, especially in Gente nostra, the periodical of the Opera nazionale dopolavoro (Gundle Reference Gundle2007, 146). Peasant costumes were not absent from the pages of ‘Voi e il cinema’, as in the case of Genia D’A. (Figure 1), but there were only five in all, and they only appeared in the first two years. The column editors never express their approval or satisfaction when the girls adopt a Fascist model; ‘L’Aiutoregista’ advises Genia to have some ‘beautiful and dignified photographs’ taken by a professional photographer as soon as she arrives in Rome, as she claims she is about to do.Footnote ²⁶ Yet, even Genia – beyond her simple clothes – seems to be striking a pose like a showgirl, with her legs on display, her hands on her hips and her gaze turned upwards. Especially in close-ups, the handkerchief tied under the chin brings out the eyes, mouth and face rather than the (otherwise abundant) hair.

Figure 1.

Genia D’A., 17 July 1940.

Another model of femininity adopted by the regime, aimed explicitly at girls, was that of the young women of Fascist organisations, disciplined and in uniform, depicted in parades or choreographed exercises. As De Grazia has pointed out, these images reveal that Fascist iconography tolerated the image of the body in its entirety. However, even the body of a girl wearing a GIL (Gioventù Italiana del Littorio) suit, such as that of Blonde Olga (Figure 2),Footnote ²⁷ does not appear as an almost indistinguishable part in a collective invited to compose itself, but as a subject that voluntarily and individually exhibits itself. Moreover, in this case, the pose does not seem particularly studied – rather, it is chosen because of the scarcity of this type of image (two in all) – and is anything but graceful or athletic. The hands in the pockets lifting the trousers and the legs spread apart recall that masculine attitude feared by the etiquette of the time, which recommended that girls should preserve their femininity – understood as gentleness and delicacy – even in sports, now widespread under the pressure of the regime (Turnaturi Reference Turnaturi2011, 142).

Figure 2.

Blonde Olga, 17 April 1940.

In sum, the few photographs exhibiting models promoted by the regime are not exalted as being representative of the values of Fascism per se, either by the girls or by the column editors. They are perceived as the expression of an individual and her personal ambitions, in a context in which ‘asserting one’s individuality in the face of the aesthetic models dictated by the state represented an important act of self-confidence’ (De Grazia Reference De Grazia1993, 291). The sending of photographs is the best illustration of this self-confidence – or the attempt to establish it through the receipt of a positive response – combined with personal ambition and a protagonist mindset, all characteristics that were not even in line with the subordinate behaviour expected of women. Closely linked to commercial culture, the narcissistic component thus greatly contributed to challenging traditional and Fascist models (De Grazia Reference De Grazia and de Grazia with E. Furlough1996, 354), offering a glimpse of a ‘group self-portrait’, a sort of ideal projection, both personal and collective, of a generation that defined itself through shared consumption practices (Edwards Reference Edwards2004, 30). By choosing ‘Voi e il cinema’ as its title, the column itself addressed and simultaneously shaped a community of peers.

Desiring subjects

Since ‘Voi e il cinema’ published mainly close-ups, we may assume that this was the type of shot it received most frequently. However, over the years, there were more and more full-length portraits of girls wearing predominantly ‘masculine’, modern clothes: trousers or beachwear, such as shorts and swimsuits (not always one-piece).Footnote ²⁸ These images were in keeping with the Hollywood lifestyle (Casalini Reference Casalini and Casalini2016) promoted by the magazines, which celebrated leisure time, sport, healthy outdoor activities and the cult of the body and physical beauty, but also reflected qualities and practices endorsed by Fascism. However, far from showing disciplined bodies, these images – especially those showing skin – seem to refer to a specific photographic genre: the pin-up. As Maria Elena Buszek (Reference Buszek2006, 12) has noted, pin-ups were, by definition, intended to be viewed, and in these images, the subject’s sensuality was considered appropriate to be expressed and displayed (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

K.M.L. 328, 5 October 1941.

Since the 1910s, this representation of the female body has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of the image of passive women (Mulvey Reference Mulvey1975),Footnote ²⁹ but it has also portrayed them as conscious of their sensuality, assertive, strong and independent. Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, for example, showed that they possessed ‘it’ – as Elinor Glyn defined, in 1927, ‘that certain something’ that would be called sex appeal in the following decade – and helped to construct their own image. I believe that the multifaceted and complex female gaze on women themselves is present even in some of the photographs sent to Cine illustrato, and that the gaze of the Italian girls was, in addition, a gaze that wanted to convey emotions and desires (Landay Reference Landay, Bean and Negra2002; Basinger Reference Basinger1993; Studlar Reference Studlar and Abel1996).

Manuals dictated that a ‘good girl’ should keep her eyes down – especially in public – to show modesty and seriousness, two indispensable qualities in the marriage market, but few modest gazes can be found on the pages of ‘Voi e il cinema’, and even those that do not seek the lens do not seem to respond to this typology. The girls usually have boldly bare shoulders, and the gaze is not turned downwards but rather sideways, to evoke mystery and sensuality, or upwards, to show a dreamy air (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Will I be a diva? Will I? 23 November 1941.

With sparkling eyes and beaming smiles, many girls look straight into the camera and, consequently, at the magazine reader. These gazes – as in the photograph with the title ‘Higher’ (Figure 5), which in itself implies ambition, or ‘Will I be a diva? Will I?’ – are meant to engage the readers and imbue them with a somewhat ‘reckless’, more or less consciously constructed self-abandonment. In other words, through these photographs and the desire to see them published, the girls did not only offer themselves to the gaze of others as objects of (male) desire, but they also, and mainly, portrayed themselves as desiring subjects.Footnote ³⁰

Figure 5.

Higher, 21 May 1941.

The careful presentation of one’s physical beauty (and aspirations) can be seen as an act of artifice, fiction or invention, but it also testifies to the subjects’ willingness to work on a project of the self. Prohibited by etiquette and by the education minister, who in 1935 banned it for female teachers, ‘self-painting’ (De Giorgio Reference De Giorgio1992, 185) was proudly displayed on the pages of ‘Voi e il cinema’, so much so that when aspiring divas judged the make-up and pose insufficient to obtain the desired version of themselves, they subsequently intervened in the image, with not always successful results. In 1941, for example, ‘Biancastella’ sent in a photograph (Figure 6) that was heavily retouched, perhaps by herself or by the photographer.Footnote ³¹ ‘L’Aiutoregista’ addressed the latter, who was reproached for being a ‘great humorist’. The intervention with a pen to lengthen the eyelashes, accentuate the lips and draw the eyebrows reveals a desire to approach aesthetic canons considered unattainable, but also a certain awareness of the artificiality of the intervention. In fact, ‘Biancastella’ in a sense challenged the column, insistently asking for (or so the reply suggests) the publication of her worst photo, given that the magazine published – according to her – so many ugly images.

Figure 6.

Biancastella, 21 May 1941.

As in the case of ‘Biancastella’, it is mainly the eyelashes, eyebrows and lips that undergo the most frequent ‘corrective’ interventions. After all, ‘L’Aiutoregista’ defined the perfect film face as one characterised by ‘neatly drawn lips, kilometre-long eyelashes, a stereotypical smile and bright, sparkling eyes’.Footnote ³²

Blonde hair – both natural and, especially, bleached – had an important symbolic meaning that was constantly reaffirmed. Since the mid-1930s, platinum blonde had indeed been the requirement of the modern woman. Although the black-and-white prints do not do justice to the colour, golden hair is flaunted in some images, but also proudly and cheekily displayed in the choice of pseudonyms such as ‘Cruel blonde’, ‘Spicy blonde’, ‘Platinum blonde’, ‘Blonde sphinx’, ‘Blonde dynamite’ and ‘Blonde student Lilly’. The affirmation of one’s identity and sensuality and the assertion of one’s potential are, then, entrusted to hair colour. The decision to bleach, but also to have wavy hair, reveals the desire for a glamorous life and to express one’s sex appeal, but even if the hair is not platinum blonde, it still proves to be a sign of identity that must be exhibited (‘devilish brunette’ is another relevant pseudonym in this sense), at a time when the integrity and naturalness of the hair was instead considered a sign of a ‘good girl’. Other than attesting to the emancipation of hair, the photos published in Cine illustrato decreed the substantial disappearance of hats, a symbol of bourgeois decorum, which these girls decided not to wear. As Georges Vigarello noted, ‘the sight of hair waving freely in the open air, without any covering or hat, bleached or styled, is one of the most important signs of change’ (2004, 210). The most frequent hats, on the other hand, are navy hats, which mainly recur in holiday and seaside contexts, paired with shorts, hands that salute militarily – like the Hollywood girls – and sometimes even with a bold cigarette in the mouth (Figure 7).

Figure 7.

Madilla, 5 February 1941.

Another interesting aspect is the showing of legs. As I have mentioned, girls in full-length portraits almost always wear trousers, shorts or swimsuits, which accentuate the legs. These have become the symbol par excellence of American beauty and were essential to the definition of sessappello (Scerbanenco Reference Scerbanenco1936: 7). In addition to being an instrument of seduction, they represent an expression of emancipation and autonomy because they impyl movement, going out (Perrot Reference Perrot, Duby and Perrot1991). The adjective most often associated with this part of the body in magazines is ‘nervous’, to indicate its attractiveness, a term also heard in Ma le gambe, sung in 1938 by Enzo Aita and the Trio Lescano. The positive meaning given to the adjective ‘nervous’ in relation to women’s legsFootnote ³³ is a particularly relevant sign of the change in models of femininity: originally referring to hysteria, the typical disease of nineteenth-century femininity, it became a powerful signal of modernity and dynamism. In the 1930s, film magazines generously displayed legs, from those of the stars to those of the bathing girls or the so-called gold diggers of Hollywood fame, groups of girls in swimsuits dancing in groups. The magazines constantly celebrated women’s legs – nervous, slim and swift – and advised female readers not only on how to walk in order to appear dynamic and modern, but also on the new need to have their legs insured, as they were considered a key asset to a film career.

The fact that a modern, sporty, smiling, sunny, dynamic and youthful beauty – exemplified by legs – was on the rise is confirmed by the comments on ‘static’ poses à la Francesca Bertini, the famous silent film actress. This was the case with a ‘Twenty-year-old clerk’ from Parma (Figure 8):

Figure 8.

Twenty-year-old clerk, 23 August 1942.

Educated, photogenic…quite the character!

Unlike other readers’ columns, ‘Voi e il cinema’ did not seem to discourage ‘every questionable choice, every outdated solution, every casual attitude’ (Salvatici Reference Salvatici, Franchini and Soldani2004, 121). The editors’ replies suggested what intellectual and character traits were indispensable for launching a film career. In addition to education, culture and curiosity, requirements that in themselves were not taken for granted in girls, the most frequently cited qualities for a star were temperament and willpower, liveliness, nonchalance and the willingness to move, especially to Rome, to attend the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia. In sum, you had to have a clear plan, make choices – even daring ones – and be willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve it. Beauty alone was not enough; it had to be combined with intelligence, culture and a certain amount of audacity. ‘In the intellectual conditions you are in today, you will never be able to stand before a camera’ was the verdict for ‘Carmelita C.’,Footnote ³⁵ while ‘Maria P.’ was told she lacked the necessary culture even ‘to be an extra’.Footnote ³⁶ ‘You don’t seem to be a strong-willed type, one of those girls with a dynamic and overwhelming will and who jump over obstacles with both feet’, was the discouraging message to ‘Isa C.’,Footnote ³⁷ whereas ‘Paola’ convinced the column editors with her ‘beautiful vivacity and a certain tenacity’.Footnote ³⁸ You could, or rather, you had to, have it all, or, in other words, you had to have personality, one of the defining characteristics of the Hollywood star . Indeed, 1930s glamour was about self-confidence and the possession of requirements that were at odds ‘with the traditional feminine virtues of innocence and modesty’ (Dyhouse Reference Dyhouse2010, 45).

One of the prerogatives that was considered indispensable was photogenicity. The frequency with which the term is used reveals the affirmation and popularity of a new social value, of a ‘quality that is not in life but in the image of life’ (Morin Reference Morin2016). Photogenicity added an extra quality to acting talent – not considered essential for film, whereas it was for theatre – that was, however, indispensable and undoubtedly more important than beauty. In fact, the column editors constantly invited female readers to send in different shots of themselves, both to verify whether they had the necessary talent and to test the versatility of the subjects and the multiplicity of types they were capable of embodying. In other words, the photographs were supposed to highlight the performative abilities (Butler Reference Butler1990, Reference Butler2004) of the aspiring stars, who could reflect and rework their own gender identity through the adoption of types.

As well as being photogenic, those who wanted to become a star had to demonstrate that they were ‘a character’, another factor considered typically modern and American, that is, ‘a special kind of beauty that is far removed from classical beauty, but which is singularly in keeping with modern taste, and is imitated by all the women in the world’ (Fraccaroli cited in De Giorgio Reference De Giorgio1992, 201). Film magazines insisted a lot on the distinction between beauty, photogenicity and ‘being a character’, even trying to give it a ‘scientific’ basis (Scotese Reference Scotese1940). ‘You are not really beautiful,’ ‘Carla L.’ from Turin was told, ‘but you are an interesting character, certainly worthy of attention. If you are as lively, light-hearted and carefree as your photos suggest, you could perhaps play roles like those that made Lilia Silvi famous.’Footnote ³⁹ ‘Amalia Rav’. from Genoa, on the other hand, was reassured that she was ‘quite photogenic, although one cannot say that you are beautiful. There is something interesting about you; in short, you are a character. And that is what it takes to have a career in the film industry’.Footnote ⁴⁰

In order to assess the readers’ photogenicity and character, the column editors encouraged them to send not only photos of the face but also of the whole body, as in the case of ‘16-year-old Bruna’, who was asked to send photographs with ‘a more revealing dress and if possible … in a swimsuit’.Footnote ⁴¹ ‘Jolanda P.’ from Gorizia, who was praised for having ‘a small face full of natural grace and a sweet expression’, was asked: ‘But what about the rest? The body?’ The editors eventually decided that ‘61 kilos is a bit too much for you’.Footnote ⁴²

For ‘Voi e il cinema’, photogenicity and ‘being a character’ could not be separated from being in shape, that is, from showing a thin or, at least, not plump body, quite unlike the physicality of the Fascist ‘brood-mare’. The column editors often used heavy irony when the girls did not meet the standards of thinness deemed necessary: ‘An expression of a happy heart and a well-fed girl’ was the definition given to ‘Norma B.’ (Figure 9),Footnote ⁴³ while ‘Maria D.’ from Milan was told that she was ‘not a girl who lives by illusions, but rather by macaroni and beef fillets’Footnote ⁴⁴; ‘Judging by your photogenic type one would say that you don’t dream … except for that part of the girl who always has such an appetite’, was what an anonymous girl had to read next to her portrait (referred to only with the number 10),Footnote ⁴⁵ on a page that contained 14 shots instead of the usual three or four. As Graeme Turner (Reference Turner2014) has pointed out, mockery and disdain are common sentiments towards ordinary people who aspire to stardom; at the same time, the definition of outsiders and freaks serves to define the norms and margins of the peer group.Footnote ⁴⁶

Figure 9.

Norma B., 31 July 1940.

Looking at the pictures and the comments directed at the most exposed bodies, it is worth quoting a reply to ‘Lidia M.’ (Figure 10), who feared that she was not seen enough. ‘L’Aiutoregista’ joked that, on the contrary, she was seen very well and ‘even too much’, and then made the ‘usual’ warning: ‘[T]o become a star, it is not enough to be a beautiful girl, with a more or less provocative shape and a more or less bright smile.’Footnote ⁴⁷ However, there is no other comment that stigmatises, in any way, the exhibition of the body even in more sensually explicit attitudes and clothing.Footnote ⁴⁸

Figure 10.

Lidia M., 29 January 1941.

The girls often referred to specific stars in their letters, clearly hoping that the magazine would confirm a certain likeness. In the case of ‘Voi e il cinema’, readers wished to resemble the up-and-coming young women of the time, such as Alida Valli and Maria Denis, but the most frequently confessed aspiration was to be a Deanna Durbin lookalike. However, they almost always ran the risk of being sarcastically contradicted, except for ‘Diana V.’ (Figure 11), who was allowed this illusion.

Figure 11.

Diana V., 17 April 1940.

In his reply to the lucky reader, ‘L’Aiutoregista’ includes a passage from the letter she sent to the magazine, which seems to be a good example of how the girls implied their resemblance to a star by denying it:

The presumption of resembling a star was often demeaned, always belittled and contrasted with the celebration of uniqueness and distinction, concepts that obviously clashed with the regime’s ambition to standardise young women in the totalitarian project. For example, not only was ‘Parma S.S. 51ʹ denied the affinity with Simone Simon she had hoped for, but she herself remarked that ‘similarities in cinema are bad, one must be original’.Footnote ⁵⁰

The predilection for Deanna Durbin, together with a celebration of female friendship that should not be taken for granted, is evident in photographs of trios, sometimes on bicycles, which explicitly recall the successful film Three Smart Girls (released in Italy in 1937), starring the 15-year-old Canadian actress. These portraits take pleasure in showing a shared autonomous experience and their own model of inspiration: that of the teenage girl, a new social figure successfully embodied by Durbin, which was gaining ground in the United States precisely in the 1930s, through distinct and distinctive choices of consumption and culture (Studlar Reference Studlar2013).