Le olimpiadi della bellezza: storia del concorso di Miss Italia 1946-1964.

The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to analyze Italian society between 1946 and 1964, star-ting from an apparently unimportant event, a beauty pageant. Miss Italia contest has been part of the Italian collective imagery as a cultural phenomenon from its very beginning, great “Olympics of Beauty” encompassing all the ambitions and miseries of the whole Italian nation, its various provin-cial attitudes, its first steps towards the prosperity everybody was longing for, even before actually experiencing it, just dreaming of it thanks to American films. This research concentrates on the contest managers and their cultural background, it relates to specific documents and press releases and it is divided into three chapters. The first one analyzes the origin of the competition, the eco-nomic aspects (capital and financial support), its organization in terms of regulations and purposes, with a special interest in its founder Dino Villani. Two “types” of beauty emerged during the com-petition and they are the research focus: the model of the “perfect girlfriend” proposed by the ma-nagers and the one the audience liked best, a curvy sexy Italian woman. The second chapter deals with the year 1954, a breaking point in the history of the pageant. The “enemies” of the contest are described, belonging to both the left-wing and right-wing groups. This competition aroused suspi-cion and worries in Italian public opinion, which was so characterized by clericalism and moralism that some conservative Christian Democrats attacked the beauty pageant and proposed to abolish it by law for having morally disturbing effects («causa di turbamento per la pubblica morale»). The bill was proposed by Onorevole Galletto, a mouthpiece of the Catholics, it divided the Government, which was forced to consider both the economic and the moral aspects of the question. This rese-arch concentrates on the opposing parties, the relevance given to the bill on media, until it was re-jected. The left-wing opposing front created a “more wholesome” alternative to Miss Italia Beauty Contest. The third chapter tells about the changes the contest has undergone after the successful pe-riod ended in 1954, the new cultural and economic issues it has mirrored in a country whose race to prosperity and modernity was unrestrainable. The contest prizes have changed as well as the conte-stants’ characteristics, because girls are now shrewder. The idea of beauty as a natural gift is outda-ted, beauty seems rather the result of a process everybody can plan and go through with success. Despite the economic crisis, the pageant still continues, proving commercial interests prevail over various forms of moralism.