This has been a tough summer for the Italian male, one when the most offensive insult of all has been added to serious injury. It was bad, indeed painfully cruel, to have the Euro 2000 football championship stolen away by the perfidious Frogs with just 20 seconds to go in Rotterdam last month.
Worse news came this month when two separate scientific surveys revealed that the Italian male had lost another title, namely that of the world's best lover. Oh yes, the Latin lover, Italian-style, is reportedly in decline, outdone in sexual activity and prowess by Brazilians, North Americans and even, insult of insults, by the English.
The respective bearers of these bad tidings are the Italian research institute, Censis, and English professor Judith Mackay, author of The Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behaviour. Both Censis and Prof Mackay have recently published their findings based, in the case of Censis, on a survey of 1,503 Italians between the age of 18 and 80 and, in the case of Prof Mackay, on five years' analysis of sexual behaviour worldwide.
With slight statistical variations, both studies conclude that Italian sexuality, rather being the last outpost of hedonistic, mind-blowing eroticism, is in fact conformist and conservative, with a good dash of neurosis and narcissism thrown in. Italians, they suggest, do not so much "do it better", as T-shirts have been known to proclaim, as do it later, less often and less sustainedly.
Prof Mackay's survey claims that Italian men and women, on average, lose their virginity at the respective ages of 19 and 22 (the English, Germans and Danes are ready for retirement at the age), that they have sex 92 times per year (49 times less per annum than the damned French - ye Gods, wasn't Rotterdam enough for you, ye lousy Frogs) and that they, erh, sustain the performance for only a miserable 14 minutes (Brazilians are reportedly good for 30 minutes - and they keep on winning the World Cup, too, sickening lot).
The Censis figures make similar if not identical reading, concluding that virginity is lost at 17 (male) and 18 (female), that settled couples make love 50-60 times per year and that only a 7.7 per cent minority claim to extend the, erh, whole business into extra time i.e. longer than 15 minutes. Worst of all, 42.6 per cent of Italian males admit to suffer or having suffered from a loss of libido while 59.2 per cent confessed to being worried about their sexual "performance". So then, the Italian Latin lover is dead, quod erat demonstrandum.
Frankly, perhaps a more pertinent question might be: was he ever alive, or was he not the figment of lively Latin imaginations, aided and abetted by a systematic misreading of the cultural signals by northern Europeans and others?
Take some of the most basic misunderstandings. The German, Danish or English tourist on a summer seaside holiday in Sardinia, Tuscany, Veneto or wherever can hardly fail to notice the many bronzed and beautiful, lithe, sexy-looking young Italian bodies on display, both before and after dark. Our northern European male holidaymaker might look at a nubile young Italian woman and conclude that her gaudy makeup, scant clothing and sexy demeanour all conceal an ozone layer of intoxicating sexual mystique that positively invites closer inspection. Our northern European friend would probably be wrong. Strutting your stuff, putting on the bella figura as you go out on the nightly struscia up and down the seafront is one thing, but sex and sexual activity are quite another. You can look but not touch, that is unless you are willing to settle for a lifetime of Christmas, Easter and summer holidays - not to mention Sunday lunches - with her parents.
"Casual sex" would appear to have a very limited shelf life in Italy. Relationships that develop into sexual ones very quickly become "serious". Not for nothing, many young Italian women, even today, tend to refer to their boyfriend not as il mio ragazzo but rather as il mio fidanzato (my fiance). Not for nothing either, the childhood sweetheart syndrome still rides the Italian waves. Without even a moment's pause, most of us long-term Italian residents can think of two or three couples among our friends who were childhood sweethearts, who have grown up together, married and had children, all as if the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s had never happened. (Some, but by no means all, such relationships tend to go into crisis when the couple reach their mid-30s, early 40s and begin to feel frustrated by their lack of previous sexual experimentation.)
The northern European holidaymaker might turn on his TV in his hotel room and find himself confronted with programming that not only seems to pump out serious quantities of soft porn but also seems incapable of broadcasting even the simplest of variety, games or quiz show without an army of semi-naked, semi-erotic male and female dancers. He might conclude that right here in the good old Bel Paese, it's all going down. Again, he could be wrong.
The Italian media frenzy re sexual imagery, sexual movements, sexy clothing and being sexy is about everything and anything other than sex itself, the act of making love. It is about sex the product, sex the bella figura, sex as exhibitionism and sex as the collective fantasy of an increasingly neurotic popular culture: "For some while now, Italians under the age of 50 have been experiencing a loss of sexual desire," psychiatrist Paolo Crepet told Panorama weekly magazine recently. "We Italians have not known how to react in an adult manner to the sexual liberation of the last 30 years, we're now frightened of relationships and we tend to live out our sexual lives more through sexual fantasies than sexual reality,"
Nor is Dr Crepet alone in that line of thought. Commenting on the findings of the Censis report last week, Censis director, sociologist Giuseppe De Rita sounded a similar note when saying that many Italians were actually looking for anything other than a true relationship, explaining: "I get the impression that rather than confront `others', Italians are busy chasing after their own double, their own self-image in which they can be reflected without having to ask themselves any serious questions."
On one point, the Censis and Mackay findings differ - namely infidelity. Censis claims that 18 per cent of sexually active Italians betray one another while Prof Mackay puts the figure much higher, 38 per cent. "Sexologist" Dr Alessandra Graziottin of San Raffaele hospital in Rome, has an explanation for the difference in research results. Perhaps, she says, some of those questioned did not tell the truth. I mean, if some stranger rang you up and started asking you about when and how often you betrayed the wife, would you (a) give full, true and frank replies or (b) tell him to get on his Honda 50, rev up and take straight off the end of Dun Laoghaire pier?
From what I know, at least 50 per cent of couples betray one another. Perhaps, that 18 per cent figure refers to habitual infidelity," she adds.
So then, all is not lost - at least according to Prof Mackay's survey. Whether it be out of boredom, out of a sense of transgression, for love or for revenge, Italians are less faithful and have more "mistresses" than others such as the Spanish and the French. (No injury-time goal can fix that one, Frogs).
Furthermore, Prof Mackay points out that women in 14 countries in the world consider Italian men the most romantic of all. Great . . . mind you, excuse me, professor, but what countries are we talking about? Mongolia, Lithuania, Greenland . . . ?
