Favourite Italian models 2010

One of my friends likes nude female forms on his desktop, and oscillates between paintings of famous patiners like Rubens and the models in flesh and blood. I noticed that he had placed the icon of the trashbox right between the legs of his current wallpaper-heart throb and I was wondering, what it could mean in psychological terms? Any guesses from the psychiatrists or psychologists among you?

Anyway, I was talking to him about his favourite Italian top-models and this is the list he gave:

No. 5 Barbara Montereale - she is the young single mom, who had come to news for having gone to some parties of Italian prime-minister, and has since done some calendars, etc.

No. 4 is Chiara Salvadé - she is a newspaper and radio journalist, as well as a model.

No. 3 is Emanuela Fulgori, who is a model.

No. 2 is Bianca Balti, the Italian top-model and actress, who came to limelight after she was chosen for a Dolce & Gabbana campaign.

No. 1 is Lucia Galbava, a new and upcoming model. Actually she is from Bratislava, but my friend insisted that since she is working for Italian fashion, so she can be considered Italian top model.

Personally I like the idea of Chiara Salvadé, since I like the idea of beauty with brains, but I don't like her pictures. However, if I have to chose my favouirtes from the Italian covergirls, I would choose Margherita Buy. She is no girl, but is a wonderful actress and I like her very much.

Actually I prefer, Indian women dressed in traditional Indian dresses as wallpapers for my desktop, but if I have to choose an Italian face, I would prefer it to be Margherita Buy.

Age and desirability

I was with a friend and we were talking about the most beautiful Italians. I told him about a blog post I had written some time ago about my favourite Italian sex symbols and that I had put Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli in my top list.

"What?" he said horrified, "but they are old!!!"

"OK, I also had Monica Bellucci in that list", I added.

"She is also too old for this kind of thing now. You have to look for some one younger!" He insisted.

"There are really hot east European babes", the bar man added helpfully, providing details about the contortions they can do in some porn videos.

"They are not women, they are just meat. And anyway they are not Italian and we exclude porn stars from this classification", my friend clarified.

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, there is no unanimity.

Actually quite a lot of them seem to root for Martina Colombari, born in 1975, she was Miss Italy in 1991 and is still considered as one of the best models here. In 2006, in a pool on the best Miss Italy of all times, she was number one.

She does look great but I don't think that she is that young, like my friend was insisting.

Many others think that Carla Bruni is the best Italian top model of all times. Born in 1967 and now married to the French president Sarkozy, even Ms. Bruni is also not very young.

Two other names were mentioned on some websites - Marta Cecchetto and Federica Ridolfi. Ms. Ridolfi was in some recent list of top 100 most desirable women of the world compiled by Askmendotcom. Yet, born in 1974, Ms. Ridolfi is 34.

Marta Cecchetto, the other person often mentioned was born in 1978.

Finally a group of Italian journalists asked to identify the woman they would like to see nude on a calendar, gave the maximum votes to Ilaria d'Amico, a TV presenter but their choice had not so much to do with age, as with the fact that Ms. Ilaria refuses to have top less or nude pictures.

So in the end does it matter what year persons are born? Anyway, I feel that desiring a person has much more to do with the perceived personality of the person than just measurements of breasts or hips, etc. My wife keeps on saying that she finds Sean Connery, who must be seventy now, sexy. So there is hope for all of us, over the hill, but still somehow sexy and desirable, to the people who matter most to us! And I will stick with my Ferrilli and Parietti, thankyou.

The tragedy of being a sex symbol

I had gone to work on my bicycle. In the evening, when I finished, there was a slight drizzle and so I locked my bicycle and left it there and decided to take a bus. The bus starts nearby and thus when it reaches our bus stop, it is still relatively empty. I found an empty seat and parked myself there. On that seat somebody had left a folded newspaper.

Soon the bus reached the university area and young students filled the bus. I was going through the newspaper I had found my seat, when I suddenly heard a sharp intake of breath close to me. I looked at the newspaper and I understood the reason for the sudden silence around me. I think all the persons around me were looking at the full page ad on the newspaper.

It is an ad of the March issue of a men’s magazine called Max and the picture showed the cover of the magazine with a breath-taking nude young woman. The picture shows the face and the back of the woman clearly while her breast is seen in a silhouette. The girl is Eva Riccobono and is described as the new Italian top model, a new sex symbol.

As I got down from the bus, I took care to take that newspaper with me. Usually I prefer looking at more mature woman but in this picture, Ms. Riccobono does look wonderful.

While walking to home, I was thinking about the tragedy of Ms. Riccobono. When people proclaim you as a sex symbol, when you become famous for your beautiful body, I guess in your head a clock starts ticking like never before.

I think that all professions where your face, your body are the most important part of being you, the pressure must be terrible. The pressure to be thin, to be paranoid about every strand of hair out of place, every little pimple or wrinkle that appears, every bad angle that could show you less than perfect. How long it is going to last, you must be asking yourself.

And when people love you for your body, somehow it means that rest of you is not worth much. Initially you may love being the sex symbol, but soon you must be dreading it and hating it as much as you love it. Not that I was ever a sex symbol so that I can speak about the feelings of a sex symbol, but you only need to look around at all those beautiful people and how they all, sooner or later, try to show that they are not all body and beauty, that gives you an idea of how they feel.

So many of them become a recluse as their bodies start to age. Like Brigitte Bardot. There was a time, she was the epitome of sex symbols.

And then she hid, closed herself in baggy clothes, huge sunglasses and floppy hats, trying to become invisible. Finally she did find redemption in her love for animals and found the courage to come out and be herself. Look at her older pictures and you realise that she is still wonderfully beautiful, even if it is a different kind of beauty, more gentle and relaxed.

Some of them never find the courage to come out, like Greta Garbo, who lived her life behind closed doors and died in her solitude.

More closer to home we have our Rekha. Look at her pictures from twenty years ago and now, she still looks young and beautiful and yet in a way, a caricature of herself. Even as a grandmother in films like Krissh, she continues to be a young woman dressed as a granny.

Relax Rekha ji, we would still like you even if you let yourself go and relax a little bit. It is ok even if you are not perfect always, chill and enjoy.

Rekha 20 yrs ago (above) and now (below)

Yet, once you are prisoner of your image, I guess that it requires lot of courage to come out into open.

So don’t be jealous of these moments of glory of Eva Riccobono. She is sure to earn millions but she is also going to pay a heavy price for it. So best of luck Ms. Riccobono. Once the party is over, I hope you will have the courage to come out and be yourself.

Italian sex symbols

Italy has given some famous sex symbols of yesteryears such as Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Marcello Mastroianni. But in more recent times, Italian stars hardly get an international image except for a stray Roberto Benigni, who can hardly be called a sex symbol. Yet, sex symbols are very much alive and kicking here, even if their names remain limited in the national boundries.

The famous saying that sex is all in the head can be extended also to sex symbols. The persons that I find irristably sexy might leave you completely cold, so the choice of todays Italian sex symbols is very personal.

The female sex symbols

I have a hard time choosing between Sabrina Ferrilli and Alba Parietti for the first place but in the end Ferrilli wins. A curvacious and filled out body, she is no anorexic model. Her nicest features are her awesome smile and innocent and merry eyes, with ample help from her generous bosom and a very caressable didietro. She has been good in dramatic and serious roles in films and TV, has been a presenter and singer and still, every now and then, she appears as the sexy diva, immediately inflaming passions all accross the country. No more a young lass, her maturity has added an extra dimension to her allure.

Before a football championship, she announced that if her team (Lazio) won the championship she will walk nude in Rome, had her fans praying fervently for the win of Lazio. When Lazio did win, she did appear in a show in a Roman garden dressed in only in panties and her fans had shouted asking her to maintain her promise.

Her nude pictures in a calendar for an Italian men's magazine Max, sky rocketed its sales to more than a million copies.

The choice of Alba Parietti would probably not be supported by many Italians. They would consider her too much advanced in years to be a current sex symbol. Perhaps they are right but to me she is still one of most attractive persons, in spite of her siliconised lips. Elected Miss Italy in 1979, Alba is known for her leftist views, her down to earth way of speaking and her frank opinions. I still remember one of her electrifying dances on a TV show almost twenty years ago and to me she is like a high class liqueur that gets better with age.

Monica Bellucci is the third person on this list, who has got some international name. Most of the time, I find Bellucci a little too cold and artificial for my taste but she does have it in her to become a mediterrenean vulcano, when needed.

The male sex symbols

Kim Rossi Stuart started his career as a young martial arts hero in the Boy with the Golden Kimono series of movies with Ken Watanabe. With blond hair and cool blue eyes, he quickly acquired the fame of being a sex symbol. His long nude scenes for Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wanders amplied this fame. After a number of films and TV serials, he decided to shift over to sensible cinema and theatre, choosing films and plays with serious sombre themes. I specially remember his role as the father of a disabled child in Gianni Amelio's Chiavi di Casa (The house keys), where he brought a gentle sensibility and vulnerability to the role of the father who meets his disabled grown up son for the first time and is ashamed of his own cowardness.

Raoul Bova: A story in a USA magazine in 2005 said about him:

Raoul Bova is a movie star but chances are you have never heard of him. He has won prestigious awards, being hounded by paparazzi and starred in nearly 30 films but at the Miramar hotel, Bova is just a handsome European with money to spend.

If all goes according to plan, in a few months Bova will no longer be just another dar haired good looking man in a loose-fitting lemon suit. He will be a multiple magazine cover celebrity, the kind of big star Bova is used to be being in Italy but bigger. Much bigger.

Yes, he did make it to the covers of Vanity Fair and Angeleno, did star with Madonna in a music video but that was it. A couple of years later, he is back in the familiar world of Italian films and TV serials, his hollywood dreams on the backseat for now.

Riccardo Scamarcio is the latest kid on the block. A film with some hot love scenes with the diva Monica Bellucci in Manuale d'Amore 2 (Manual of love 2) have catapulted him into big league recently. His visit to Bologna university a few days ago had loads of girls screaming in a frenzy with the police hard pressed to control the crowds. Among all the persons in this list, he is the only one that personally I wouldn't have selected but then I couldn't think of any other names.

Advertisements in Rome

I love to take pictures of ads. While looking at my Rome folder, I suddenly realised I have a nice collection of some ad-pics. So here is a selection for you.

Of course we start with Dolce and Gabbana. The designer couple are very gay, very-nose-in-the-air and some what irritating, but you have to hand it to them that they know their designs. This huge ad right next to the famous Via Veneto seems inspired from Chennai cutout of Jayalalita, that the fans of Amma love so much!


This brightly lit ad is in the beautiful Piazza Navona, I know, I have already told you about it. Actually with those wonderful fountains, I don't think that ads get much attention.
Can you guess this place? Without the crowds it is not easy to recognise it but it is the Trinità dei Monti or the Spanish steps, where Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holidays eats ice-cream. Don't tell me you haven't seen Roman Holiday, 'cause it is kind of old! Of course it is, but once you watch it, you won't forget it.


This christmas tree is in the atrium of the central station, Termini, of Rome. You are supposed to write down your wish list for christmas and hang it on the tree. And the ad? It is about the winter olympics that are due to start in the north Italian town of Turin on 10 February 2006.
This is special ad, for remembering the two Italian volunteers, Simona Pari and Simona Toretta, who were kidnapped in Iraq, asking for their release. They were indeed released unharmed. However, it is the statue on the right that requires your attention. What do you think, that man is holding with his left hand ? If you curious to take a closer look, this pic is from Campi d'Oglio, or the municipality square.
That is Nokia ad on the picture of the Egyptian pillar, surrounding the actual pillar undergoing rennovation in the Piazza della Repubblica. One of the largest squares in Rome, it is very picturesque.

To conclude, just a hint about the long lasting rennovations of historical buildings in Italy. It seems that wonderful old monuments are all in the centres of the cities, wonderful places for advertising. Since tickets don't seem to generate enough income, rennovation gives the opportunity to cover up the monument, and use it for placing ads. Rome municipality is discussing what to do about these never-ending rennovations.