TO ten years old I dreamed of straight hair like spaghetti and possibly Swedish blonde like my best friend: having curls in times without conditioner was not only a punishment, but also physical suffering with every drying.
From then on, as my body changed, I focused on small portions of skin to which I associated my idea of happiness. Changing targets often, but without stopping, until I realized that the best period had passed without me realizing it. Now, law of retaliation, I have returned to the starting point: I would be happy to have my fifteen-year-old hair backthe one I hated, rebellious yes, but exuberant, voluminous, strong.
That powerful female curse linked to the body, what is given to us, without appeal, and what we would like, which grows, swells, thickens, or weakens, stumbles, becomes fragile, chases us for a long time. Slender thighs one day, fifties waistline the next, always mosaic, and that unique set of imperfect but overall acceptable pieces struggles to recompose itself. If not with a bit of common sense and irony, when there are many turning points and experience has taught that in the end it’s fine like this, thank you. We also have other things to think about.
Danda Santini, director of “iO Donna” (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
The lawyer Marisa Marraffinospecializing in digital law, brings the attention back to young people. With the example of the twenty-year-old American who, in constant online comparison with her peers, developed an obsessive attitude towards alleged bodily defects which led her to depression and isolation. On this basis she won the case against the platforms that hammered her with images where other people’s lives are always thin, smooth, elastic, well dressed, amused, winking, winning, in a perpetual party style. But no one will be able to give her back her lost years.
(Illustration by Cinzia Zenocchini)
Even surgeons are sounding the alarm: too many are asking for plump lips and thin noses. And the obsession has also infected the kidsthose who a few years ago were satisfied with the haircut copied from their favorite footballer and now ask for sharp cheekbones and well-sculpted jaws from invasive interventions and surgical practices. Vanity no longer has a genderthe models retouched, photoshopped, smoothed with filters and lights, dictate the line, and those created ad hoc with AI are already advancing: increasingly challenging, unattainable, merciless.
For this reason, even if a model looks at you on the cover whose job is to be beautiful, more beautiful than us, the message of our “A corpo libero” event, in its fourth edition, is all in the word “free”. In the open air, breathing in the greenery, without comparison, to recover our physicality and our body, which only asks to be moved to feel alive, in all its parts. Let’s test it with new movements, fun exercises, a few dance steps together with other bodies lazy from winter and too many thoughts. It will surprise you how he knows how to follow us and support us. And how good it will make us feel when we leave it free to be our body. You won’t have a flat stomach and a straight back instantly, but a good mood is guaranteed. We guarantee.
INFO: Milan, Indro Montanelli Public Gardens, 16 and 17 May 2026 (acorpolibero.iodonna.it).
