Beatrice Arnera was on holiday at the seaside, enjoying the sun, the water, probably an ice cream. Like anyone. Then came the cover of a weekly magazine, with those two words plastered above her swimsuit belly: “suspicious belly”. We all know the following story by heart, because it has been repeated with tired precision for decades.
What broke the script this time was a lady I met in front of her daughter’s school, who approached her and said “best wishes!”. That moment, Arnera wrote in her stories, came “straight in her face”. It was no longer just printed paper. It was real life, which had absorbed and recirculated the gaze of the newspaper.
View this post on Instagram
The term of endearment as a weapon
There is something particularly successful, from the point of view of linguistic manipulation, in the use of the diminutive. “Pancino” doesn’t sound aggressive. It sounds almost affectionate, curious, innocent, and this is precisely the trap: the term of endearment removes responsibility from the writer and the reader, transforming an intrusion into another’s body into something light, almost playful. Arnera named him precisely:
the normalization of the inquisitive gaze lightened by terms of endearment like belly is one of the greatest wounds inflicted on women in 2026.
And he’s right, infantilizing language doesn’t mitigate the damage, it hides it. And what is hidden is never discussed and therefore never questioned.
Behind every belly there is a story that doesn’t belong to you
Arnera chose to say something important, and he did it with a measure that deserves respect. He recalled that behind a “tummy” there could simply be a bad day, swelling, or a food intolerance. But there can also be something else:
“much more delicate paths, made up of expectations, attempts, treatments, fears, hopes and wounds that belong to the most intimate sphere”.
She wrote that she knows well how complex the topic of motherhood can be, and how much pain lightly spoken questions can cause. He didn’t say more, and he didn’t have to. What he said is enough to understand that every time a gaze falls on a woman’s body and begins to make hypotheses, he is entering a space that has not been opened to him.
Women’s bodies are not a public space
This is the central point, and it’s worth saying without mincing words. There exists, in the culture of gossip and in part of the journalism that fuels it, an implicit assumption: that the body of a well-known, photographed, exposed woman has become to some extent a collective domain. That observing it, interpreting it, commenting on it is a right acquired with notoriety.
This is not the case, notoriety is not a surrender of one’s body to the gaze of others. Arnera said it clearly: that cover is not “the representation of an inference”, but “the legitimation of a gaze that makes anyone feel authorized to observe, interpret and comment on women’s bodies as if it were a public space”. And that “anyone” doesn’t stop at the weekly’s readers. It reaches the lady in front of the school.
Journalism has a responsibility that it cannot discharge
So far, Arnera’s reflection. But we, as journalists, are called to take a step further. Because the issue does not only concern readers or widespread culture. It concerns the editorial staff, the directors, the editorial choices. That cover didn’t come out by chance: someone chose that photo, wrote that title, approved that page. It’s a choice, and like all choices, it has consequences. In this case, a woman experienced the consequences first-hand, in the most banal and everyday moment possible: outside a school, accompanying her daughter. Saying that “it has always been done this way” is not an excuse.
Stop looking, learn to meet
Arnera closed his stories with a phrase that serves as a program: bodies should not be observed and analyzed, but only encountered and listened to. It is a subtle but fundamental distinction, observing and analyzing implies a distance, a position of superiority, a judgment that is formed before even knowing something. Meeting implies the willingness to not know, to let the other person decide what to share.
The problem doesn’t start in the editorial office and doesn’t end with a cover. It arises every time a gaze falls on a female body and begins to make hypotheses, seek confirmation, draw conclusions. The newspaper does it, of course, but so does the lady in front of the school.
We do it when we comment on a friend’s photo, when in the gym locker room our glance lasts a second too long, when we say “are you okay” with a tone that is actually a question. The cover does not create this look: it reflects it, amplifies it and gives it a license of normality. Taking away that license isn’t just the job of newspaper editors, it’s everyone’s job.
