Italian actress Anna Magnani in a still from the film 'The Rose Tattoo' directed by Daniel Mann, 1955.
Photograph: Paramount Pictures/Getty Images

'Sexist' Berlusconi faces the backlash of Italian women's anger

A new generation of Italian women are finding a voice after a 'summer of sleaze' in Italian politics

Towards the end of her career as one of Italy's most famous and loved leading ladies, the Roman actress Anna Magnani instructed her make-up artist not to conceal the lines and wrinkles on her face. "Leave them all there," she said. "I spent a lifetime earning them." Magnani is now celebrated as a role model for a new generation of Italian feminists, galvanised by sex scandals involving prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and a daily diet of sexist imagery in the media. Archive footage of Magnani's bon mot appears in a short documentary which has become a word-of-mouth sensation online in Italy. Il Corpo delle Donne, or The Body of Women, is an acid critique of the routine sexism that pervades commercial Italian television... Observer