He meant it. Yes, yes: he meant it. Paolo Mieli, with a CV as a highly respected historian, essayist and journalist, made a huge mistake by letting himself get carried away in a great body shaming sentence.
In his introduction to the press review of the day in the episode of “24 Mattino” on Radio24, yesterday 20 October, Paolo Mieli, focusing part of his speech on the upcoming regional elections in Campania, asserted that she, Souzan Fatayer – born in Nablus but settled in Naples for 40 years, teacher of the Oriental, cultural mediator and on the front line for the rights of her people, candidate on the list of the Green and Left Alliance is one:
Neapolitan Palestinian (this is how Fatayer defines herself in the first person, ed.) who praises Hamas and a very slightly overweight lady.
And voilà. How to demean a woman’s career by making comments about her physical appearance. Exclusively. The host, journalist Simone Spetia, tries to tone down:
Paolo, this isn’t important though, come on, it’s not important.
But Paolo Mieli, evidently lying elsewhere, does it worse, saying:
But if the campaign there is about hunger, famine… I’m not saying this as an aesthetic judgement… I’m saying this due to the fact that Fatayer, this lady presented like this, a Palestinian from Naples, arouses irony.
The omelette is now done. Listening to Mieli’s words one would think that the Palestinian candidate Souzan Fatayer would not be capable or have the right to express herself on the famine caused by Israel because she is overweight.
View this post on Instagram
The reactions to Paolo Mieli’s words on Souzan Fatayer
Fortunately, Paolo Mieli’s sentences on Souzan Fatayer did not go unnoticed and immediately sparked a wave of indignation.
The first to take a stand was Rosario Visone, regional co-spokesperson for the Greens in Campania, who defined Mieli’s statements as “unacceptable” and “a serious slip in terms of personal respect and human dignity”. Reducing a candidate – who has also been engaged in cultural mediation and the defense of rights for years – to a comment on her physical appearance, he added, “it has nothing to do with political or journalistic confrontation”.
Echoing him was city councilor Rosario Andreozzi, who spoke bluntly of “a shameful episode”.
Mieli – he said – a man with enormous media power, instead of confronting Souzan’s ideas, chose to talk about his body. It’s sexism, it’s racism, it’s verbal violence.
In the afternoon, the intervention of Peppe De Cristofaro, group leader of the Green and Left Alliance in the Senate, also arrived, according to which those words reveal “a sneaky way of denying the humanitarian tragedy of Gaza” that they represent “a shameful page for our public debate“.
Along the same line is the CGIL Naples and Campania, which in a note harshly condemned Mieli’s words: “Denying the hunger, pain and death of thousands of civilians is already very serious. To then stray into personal insults and body shaming to support such theses is simply shameful”
Such a sad exit leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially when it comes from an authoritative voice of Italian journalism. Because words matter, and when they are used to reduce a woman to her body – instead of enhancing her ideas, commitment or history – it is not just a fall in style: it is a cultural step backwards.
Words like those remind us how language is a powerful mirror of the world we want to build. Offending a body, belittling an identity or ridiculing an origin is never an opinion: it is a wound that affects everyone’s dignity.
In times in which language should evolve towards respect and inclusion, certain slips remind us how urgent a change of direction still is. It’s not about “political correctness”, but about humanity. Because every time you choose to comment on a body instead of a thought, you take away space for dignity and true dialogue – what can make us grow as a society.
