Maddalena Mizzoni

Almost every woman I know is, in some way, at odds with her own body. Not occasionally or superficially but very much persistently. This piece starts from a question that feels both simple and uncomfortable: when did we learn to turn against ourselves? Because it definetely wasn’t sudden, it crept in slowly, disguised as growing up, until one day you realized you were no longer simply inside your body, you were observing it, judging it and managing it as if it were something separate from...

A couple of years ago, not long after I moved to France, I found myself in a tiny bar in Paris with my mom. It was the typical Parisian place, dimly lit, slightly offbeat, with a hum of conversations that felt older than the walls themselves. My mom, in her gentle (yet relentless) way of nudging me toward experiences she thought I needed, urged me to order something “adult.” “Un martini, s’il vous plaît,” I said, my voice teetering between confidence and uncertainty. The bartender smirked as...

“E che palle” è la tipica risposta che da anni a questa parte ricevo quando, in preda al panico dell’indecisione estrema che mi assale ogni volta che mi si presenta una scelta (di solito quelle più importanti e alte filosoficamente), tipo stasera prendo la pizza margherita o la pizza “stocazzo”? oppure, con questi jeans sta meglio la maglia blu con il collo a barchetta o quella marrone con il collo a V , io esclamo, compiaciuta e convinta del fatto che sia la cosa più sensata da dire: “Boh...