On December 30, 1963, RAI—Italy’s national public broadcasting company—aired a television program entitled Milano così. Filmed during the Christmas period of that same year, the program presented viewers with images of Milan, the capital of Italy’s economic miracle. Viewers watched the Milanese shopping at department stores, taking a passeggiata (stroll) along the high-end shopping street Via Montenapoleone, and arriving at the prestigious, world renowned opera house La Scala in their finest suits, dresses, jewels, and furs. Viewers also saw Milan’s architectural symbol of modernity, Gio Ponti’s Pirelli Tower, a skyscraper reaching 407 feet into the sky, as well as the symbols of modern postwar mobility, automobiles, which filled the city’s streets.1 These images of modernity, affluence, and consumerism were juxtaposed with those of tradition and poverty—ordinary, bleak residential complexes on the city’s periferie (outskirts) that housed factory workers and the newly arrived immigrants from Southern Italy and the surrounding Lombard countryside, lines of people outside of soup kitchens or waiting for trams, women washing clothes in the city’s canals in the Navigli district, and men and women shopping at the local outdoor market stalls, le bancherelle, for holiday gifts.
By creating this juxtaposition, Milano così depicts a changing society; one that in the span of a decade and a half after the end of the Second World War in 1945 transformed from a primarily rural, agricultural based country physically and emotionally devastated from the war to a modern, industrialized, consumer capitalist one with an increased standard of living, and that would eventually become the fifth largest industrial power in the world.2 This economic, social, and cultural transformation was so rapid, so great, and so unexpected that it became known as the economic miracle.
Italy’s economic miracle lasted from 1958 to 1963, during which the country’s GNP had an annual average increase of 6.3 percent. The industrial sector’s increased production and particularly exports to other members of the European Economic Community (EEC) were key to this growth.3 Italy’s per capita income between 1950 and 1970 “grew more rapidly than in any other European country: from a base of 100 in 1950 to 234.1 in 1970, compared to France’s increase from 100 to 136 in the same period, and Britain’s 100 to 132.”4 In addition to increased industrial production and rising incomes, other important factors that characterized the economic miracle included mass migration from South to North and from rural to urban areas, the government construction of important infrastructural works, such as highways, and the development of a consumer-based Italian society.5
Although the “miracle” was not uniform throughout the entire country, with the South not experiencing the same industrial and economic changes, and not reaping the same financial benefits as the North, the country became more connected in this period than ever before. Transportation and communication developments facilitated the movement of people, goods, and ideas thereby allowing the social and cultural changes that accompanied the economic transformation to more easily spread south.
One of the most notable changes in Italy, that is visible in Milano così , was the development and growth of a mass consumer-based society. Postwar American financial assistance to and cultural influence on Italy played a large part in this development. This was primarily due to the dramatically different outcomes for the United States and Italy at the end of the Second World War. On one end of the spectrum lay the United States, which emerged as one of the two new superpowers along with the Soviet Union. Domestically, the American economy rapidly expanded. For example, the federal budget increased “from about $9 billion in 1939 to $100 billion by 1945, elevating the GNP from $91 to $166 billion” and between 1946 and 1960 the GNP more than doubled. Overall, Americans were earning more and consuming more than before the war.6 The expansion of the economy led to the increased presence and importance of mass consumerism in the country, thus making the United States a mass consumer society in the postwar period. These economic factors combined with the United States’ new leading international position to render the country the ultimate model of mass consumer capitalism. Furthermore, since a modern society in the postwar period was defined by its mass consumerism, technological innovation, efficiency, higher standard of living, abundance, and prosperity, all of which could be used to describe the United States during this period, the country also became the paradigm for modernity.7
On the other end of the spectrum lay Italy, which was in financial, political, and infrastructural ruins. Approximately 300,000 Italians, with the majority being soldiers, perished during the war.8 Around 1.2 million houses had been destroyed in cities with populations above 50,000 and over a million industrial workers were unemployed.9 Poverty was also a serious problem. An early 1950s parliamentary inquiry into poverty in the peninsula revealed that “11.7 per cent of families were housed in shacks, attics, cellars or even caves, and were too poor to afford sugar or meat; 11.6 per cent were in very overcrowded dwellings (with at least three persons per room) and ate very poorly.”10 Although 65.7 percent of the families did not suffer from this extreme poverty, they still had “on average, two persons per room and spent more than half their income on food. [Additionally,] only a minority of homes benefitted from modern conveniences.”11
Due to these drastic differences, the United States, therefore, was in a position to economically, socially, culturally, and politically influence an Italy devastated by the war and perceived to be vulnerable to Soviet Communist influence. The mass arrival, or really invasion, of American consumer culture in the Italian peninsula started in the immediate postwar period and lasted into the early 1970s (although one can argue that it really never left, just losing some of its power), leaving an indelible mark on the country’s cultural, social, and commercial development in this period of rebuilding, transition, and Cold War.
It is the topic of the American consumer cultural influence on Italian women in the three decades after the end of the Second World War to which this book gives its attention. Examining multiple aspects of Italy’s consumer transformation, this book tells the story of the reasons for and the methods of American female consumer culture’s arrival in Italy after the Second World War, the cultural-political messages its products sought to “sell” to Italian women, and how Italian women reacted to this new culture.
During the years under study, 1945–1975, the Cold War was in full swing, with the United States seeking to prevent the spread of Communism across the globe and the demise of the capitalist, democratic West by actively intervening both overtly and covertly in various places around the world. Italy, a crucial piece in the Cold War puzzle, was one of the countries where the United States exercised its power in order to shape the country in America’s image. The country’s strong Communist presence (Italy had the largest Communist party in Western Europe) and its connection to the Soviet Union alarmed US officials, making it necessary for the United States to exert a strong influence over Italy. As such, the United States provided financial assistance, political support to the conservative Christian Democratic Party (DC), and cultural products and models to Italy that represented consumer capitalist democracy.
Financially, Italy received a total of $5.5 billion between 1944 and 1954 from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), in which the United States played a leading role, Interim Aid, the Marshall Plan, and Mutual Security military aid.12 Moreover, by the Marshall Plan’s end in 1952, Italy was its third major recipient, coming after only Britain and France.13 Politically, in the lead up to Italy’s crucial 1948 parliamentary elections to determine the composition of its new constituent assembly, the United States supported the DC in order to prevent the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from earning a victory. For example, the United States awarded Italy a $100 million export-import loan after DC leader Alcide De Gasperi’s visit to the United States, and American ships that arrived on Italian shores with much needed material goods and food were accompanied by US Ambassador James Dunn’s speeches promoting “America, the Free World, and, by implication, the Christian Democrats.”14
Culturally, American commodities sent to Italy became important devices for articulating American democratic consumer capitalist concepts—individualism, freedom of choice, and prosperity—that contrasted with the Soviet Union’s Communist ethos, which included collectivism and material deprivation. The US government played a large role in spreading American culture via agencies, such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the United States Information Agency, which distributed American literature throughout Europe, and funded magazines produced by European intellectuals whose scholarship maintained a pro-American stance.15 Although not directed by the government, the exportation of American consumer products and their attendant democratic, capitalist ideals to Italy also contributed to the development of a consumer-oriented Italian society. As such, these products were part of what Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA, the federal agency created to administer the Marshall Plan) deputy administrator Harlan Cleveland described as the “revolution of rising expectations”: the American efforts to show Europeans that they too wanted an “ever wider access to the opportunities of material satisfaction” such as that enjoyed by their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, but not by those in the Soviet Union.16
Women were very much at the center of both the point of origin and points of reception of the postwar global spread of American consumer culture. As such, they had just as an important role in Italy’s postwar transformation as did the Italian entrepreneurs and the American companies who brought and sent American culture to Italy. With their purchasing power as consumers, women were the ones who perhaps had the most power in determining the ultimate success and failure of American female consumer culture in postwar Italy. Furthermore, taking into account the global Cold War occurring at the time, it becomes clear that Italian women, to a certain extent, became front line soldiers in the battle between capitalism and Communism that marked the period. Therefore, focusing on women and female consumer culture allows one to see the important role, often left in the shadows, that women had during this period of important political, social, and cultural battles between American democratic consumer capitalism and Communism.
In contrast to other studies that discuss only one aspect of American cultural influence and lack the voices of Italian women themselves, this book combines an examination of the v...