Sophia Loren

People are under the universal impression that Italians are beautiful. I was expecting it when I took my recent trip to Italy, looking forward to it. But I’m not so sure. Maybe I was overwhelmed by a country whose art and countryside are simply breathtaking, I wasn’t impressed by the Italians themselves.

Sophia Loren probably contributes to the mythology. There is no question, she keeps a man’s attention. She defines sultry, drawing you in with mystery and keeping you with the suggestion she knows about the things you want her to know about. Something about her makes your eye rove all over, it never falls anywhere for too long, desperate to see the next bit.

But if you look at her too long, any one of those bits by itself doesn’t hold on its own. I guess it might it you were into big. Big eyes, big hair, big teeth, big boobs, HUGE mouth. Maybe that’s why so many people loved her on the big screen.

The other thing she embodies, as do so many other Italian women, is a sense of being overly made up. Lots of eye makeup, lots of hairspray, perfectly and fashionably dressed in every photo. Even the turn of her hips, the angle of her face, the cast of her eyes seems contrived. Its what I like to call framing. She’s certainly very good at it, but in photos, when you can spend a good long time looking, it falls apart. Not unnatural, exactly, but not totally natural either.

I thought about Italian woman at the time that they were like an incredibly beautiful woman in the moment they wake up on their 40th birthday. Slightly tired, but fresh for the day. In need of some practiced art to make things seem slightly different than they really are. I think that pretty well sums up Sophia Loren for me.