Bella Donna

Posted February 3, 2014.

Guest post by Rob.

I don’t speak much Italian, beyond words like “fettuccini”, “Roma” (both the city and the tomato), and “saldi”, which Ellie quickly figured out means “sale”.

Other than Michelle, we all pretty much have this disability.

But when Italian men start talking about how hot your wife is, it’s the kind of thing you notice—even if you don’t immediately understand the words they say.

We hadn’t been in Rome for more than an hour before a carload of guys drove past us. One of them shouted “Bella Tourista!” at Michelle as they went by.

Michelle claims they actually said, “Belli Touristi,” meaning beautiful tourists, but let’s be honest here—no one (and by no one, I mean no one other than my own mother) has called me beautiful since I was roughly six months old.

Oh, and the other five of us definitely heard them say, bella tourista.

My suspicions were confirmed when time after time, guys would walk past Michelle and say “Bella Donna”. Some of them even turned around to get another look as she passed.

It happened enough that the boys started to notice and comment on it.

I sure noticed.

Michelle says they don’t know what they are talking about.

She may have a point.

After all, Italian men have no idea what beautiful women look like. It’s not like they ever get to see any.

Around here it's trolls mostly.

Like Sophia Loren. Who won her first beauty contest at age 14 and started a modeling and acting career that spans 94 (and counting) movies credits. And she won an Oscar. Hurts my eyes to look at.

Or Valerie Golino. Who was so awesome in Hot Shots they had to make Hot Shots Part Deux. And of course, her performance in Rain Man would have gotten a lot more notice but for Dustin Hoffman hogging the screen. Given the choice between Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Valerie Golino, there’s not a straight man in Italy (or the USA) who chooses Ms. Golino. My eyes bleed just thinking about her.

And there’s Carla Bruni, the Italian model and singer who you probably thought was French because she is married to France’s former president, Nicolas Sarkozy. She had to go to another country to find someone to save her from spinsterdom. My eyes!

Yeah, these Italian men suffer from a paucity of attractive women (as a google search for “hot Italian women” will demonstrate—which by the way, I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING).

So perhaps Michelle is right.

But probably not.

PS. With so many attractive women in this post, I thought it only fair to post a picture of a hot Italian man as well: Fabio, who looks suspiciously similar to one of the guys we heard say "bella donna" and turn around to take a second look at my wife.

Hands off Fabio she's spoken for.