Playing at mum, taking care of fake frugoletti, has always been - and still is and will be - the most democratic and loved game by Italian girls. When it comes to light, the Cicciobello is an announced success.
It happened in 1962. When it was born near Brescia. Not from a mother, however, contradictorily. He has two fathers instead, as in modern less bigoted families. One is called Gervasio Chiari, founder of the Sebino company, and the other Silvestro Bellini, a good designer. Cicciobello was born already an older boy, he would seem to be two months old, decidedly paciocco (otherwise the name would not be explained) and a boy like the very excited fathers.
Ciccio was entrusted to the arms of Italian girls in a vaguely Disney-like first version. Or more simply with the appearance of a child charming prince. And so the Cicciobello of '62 has eyes like the sea, very blond hair and wears a beautiful sky-colored onesie. And of course the pacifier.
Success led the fathers to conceive a series of siblings. Cicciobello drin drin, Cicciobello walker, Cicciobello first steps. And also cousins: Patatina and Angelino. One success after another that made it possible to enlarge the house and family: the Sabino company came to count five hundred and fifty employees.
But beyond doing drin drin, crunching and taking first steps, Cicciobello has a mission. Son of two dads, Ciccio wants to prepare the girls of Italy for their future. Cicciobello is the doll who teaches how to be a mother! Slogans that appeared by the tens of thousands in Italian mailboxes at the bottom of small notes promising home delivery of the gummy prodigy upon request. Flyers intended for all the little women of the country exactly in '68 - and who knows how much these notes will have affected Carla Lonzi when, at the end of a year, the head of the feminist movement will post the well-known manifesto on the Roman walls We do not want to think about motherhood all our life and continue to be unconscious instruments of patriarchal power. Maybe.
What is certain is that not think about motherhood just today it would be insensitive.
Mothers day
Our passion for fetishes after all comes from afar. Greeks, Romans, female deities, fertility. Rituals that were held in the month of May. To celebrate mother spring. But it is only in 1870, and in the United States - a far cry from baby cot of civilizations - that one has the intuition to dedicate a whole day to her alone, to our mother. To have it (to the detriment of Carla Lonzi) is a feminist activist: Julia Ward Howe. An intuition that the more pragmatic Anna Jarvis (whom we remember today as the real one) very much like mum Mother's Day) which will officially promote the institution of the anniversary by choosing a white carnation as a symbol.
Thus, in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1909, the world premiere of the Mother's Day.
And it will be a parish priest to ask for it to be placed on the calendar: Don Otello Migliosi from the diocese of Assisi in 1956. Only six years before the still tender arms of the girls of Italy were given the blond wonder of Ciccio, a handsome son ready to explain to everyone how to become a mother - so that they too are celebrated, every year and forever, on the second Sunday of May.
