Playing mom, taking care of hair frugoletti, has always been – and still is and will be – the most democratic and loved game by Italian girls. When it comes to light, Cicciobello is an announced success.
It happens in 1962. When he was born near Brescia. Not from a mom though, contradictorily. He has two dads on the other hand, as in modern families fewer sticks. One is called Gervasio Chiari, founder of the Sebino company, and the other Silvestro Bellini, a good designer. Cicciobello was already born big boy, two months it would seem, decidedly paciocco (otherwise the name would not be explained) and boy like the very excited dads.
Ciccio was entrusted to the arms of the Italian girls in a vaguely Disney-style first version. Or more simply with the appearance of a little Prince Charming. And so the Cicciobello of ’62 has eyes like the sea, very blonde hair and wears a beautiful sky-colored onesie. And of course the pacifier.
The success led the dads to conceive a series of siblings. Cicciobello drin drin, Cicciobello girello, Cicciobello first steps. And also cousins: Patatina and Angelino. A success after another that allowed to enlarge home and family: the Sabino company had five hundred and fifty employees.
But beyond making drin drin, grinding 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 that teaches you to be a mom! Slogans that appeared to tens of thousands in Italian mailboxes at the bottom of notes that promised on request the home delivery of the gummy prodigy. Leaflets intended for all the little women of the town exactly in 1968 – 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 poster on the Roman walls. We don’t want to think about all motherhood life and continue to be unconscious tools of patriarchal power. Who knows.
What is certain is that not thinking about motherhood today would be insensitive.
Mother’s day
Our passion for fetishes is from afar. Greeks, Romans, female gods, fertility. Rituals that were held in May. To celebrate spring mom. But it is only in 1870, and in the United States – far from the cradle of civilizations – that one has the intuition to dedicate a whole day to her only, to our mother. To have it (to the detriment of Carla Lonzi) is a feminist activist: Julia Ward Howe. An intuition that the pragmatic Anna Jarvis (who we remember today as the real mother of Mother’s Day) very much likes and 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 premiere of Mother’s Day was staged.
Mama’s boy Italy, Italy bambocciona, will have to wait another forty-seven years. And it will be a parish priest (no less) to ask for the calendar: Don Otello Migliosi from the diocese of Assisi in 1956. Just six years before the little arms of the young girls of Italy were given the blonde wonder of Ciccio, the handsome son of a rainbow family, ready to explain to everyone how to become a mother – so that they too can be celebrated, every year and forever, on the second Sunday of May.
