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Italian Women's Experiences with
American Consumer Culture,

1945–1975: The Italian Mrs. Consumer
Jessica L. Harris
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ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Italian Women’s
Experiences with American
Consumer Culture,
1945–1975
The Italian Mrs. Consumer
Jessica L. Harris
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American
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Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society
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by re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Editorial Board
Rebecca West, University of Chicago
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University
Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY
Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY
Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University
More information about this series at

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Jessica L. Harris
Italian Women’s
Experiences with
American Consumer
Culture, 1945–1975
The Italian Mrs. Consumer
Jessica L. Harris
St. John’s University
Queens, NY, USA
Italian and Italian American Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-47824-7 ISBN 978-3-030-47825-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47825-4
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To Granny Vee, Uncle Bucky, and Aunt Annette
Acknowledgments
I have many people to thank for the roles they have played in this project,
which began during my PhD studies. I would like to thank my dissertation
committee members Brenda Stevenson, Geoffrey Symcox, Kathryn
Norberg, Robin D. G. Kelley, and John A. Agnew for their support, guid-
ance, and the time they dedicated to this project. Professors Norberg,
Kelley, and Agnew gave me invaluable insight, advice, and suggestions.
Professors Symcox and Stevenson supported this project from the very
beginning and helped shape it into a broader and more diverse narrative.
Professor Symcox’s personal accounts of being in Italy during the time
period under study provided me with important insight into Italian cul-
ture at that time, and the stories were also a delight to listen to. I have
been working with Professor Stevenson for over ten years now, from when
I first entered UCLA’s Afro-American Studies Master’s program. During
these years, she has been a true mentor and has shaped the scholar that I
have become. I cannot thank her enough for this.
The research for this project was conducted in Italy, and I am grateful
to the archivists and librarians in Milan, Rome, and Pieve Santo Stefano
who assisted me with my research. In Rome, the staff at the Fondazione
Istituto Gramsci helped me with Noi Donne. In Milan, the librarians at the
Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense and the Biblioteca Palazzo Sormani, in
particular the deposito esterno, helped me with understanding the Italian
library system, as well as with my research on the numerous magazines
consulted at their libraries. I also am grateful to the archivists, in particular
Tiziano Chiesa, and the staff at the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mondadori in Milan. Everyone at Bocconi University in Milan, where I

consulted the Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente—from the staff at the
Welcome Desk who helped me with my ID card to the library director Dr.
Marisa Santasiero who authorized my visit and the reproduction of the
archival material to the archivists, Tiziana Dassi, Silvia Franz, and
Gianmarco Ambrosetti, with whom I worked on a daily basis—were very
friendly and accommodating. I am very appreciative for this and their
assistance. In Pieve Santo Stefano, the staff at the Archivio Diaristico
Nazionale, especially Cristina Cangi, offered great assistance with my
research in their collection.
I would also like to thank Marco Calini, Silvia Magistrali, and Sonia
Orlandi, whom I met and worked with in Milan. Marco retrieved crucial
information on Ignis for me while Silvia and Sonia, at RCS MediaGroup,
were great in helping me with my research on Annabella and with bring-
ing to my attention other archival material that was pertinent to this proj-
ect and my other scholarly and cultural interests. Marco, Silvia, and Sonia
went beyond just assisting me with my research. They were always so wel-
coming and kind, inviting me to lunch, movies, and even the symphony. I
would also like to thank Giuseppe Betti for showing me his Milan and
always taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with me whenever I
was in town. They all made my time in Milan a very enjoyable experience.
I am truly grateful for their kindness and to be able to have them as friends.
I also would like to thank Emanuela Scarpellini for her suggestions and
insight into this project, as well as Kathryn Renton and Stephanie Amerian
who read parts of the manuscript. I am also grateful for Manuela Terenzi’s
assistance with some of the peskier translations of the articles and adver-
tisements. Furthermore, part of Chap. 5 previously appeared in Modern
Italy, 22(1), © 2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy, published
by Cambridge University Press as “‘In America è vietato essere brutte’:
Advertising American beauty in the Italian women’s magazine Annabella,
1945–1965” and Chap. 6 previously appeared in Carte Italiane 2 (11) as
“Noi Donne and Famiglia Cristiana: Communists, Catholics, and
American Female Culture in Cold War Italy.”
I must mention other people I have met while working on this project
that have become great friends these past years and have always been
there to listen to me discuss the developments of the book. Andrew
Gomez, who also read sections of the manuscript, was always there to
offer very insightful advice. Rosario Forlenza was another great source
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
of information, archival suggestions, and support. While finishing the

manuscript in Toronto, I was fortunate to meet and become friends with
Alberto Zambenedetti, Eloisa Morra, Damiano Acciarino, Alice
Martignoni, and Daniele Laudadio. They were always available to discuss
the latest Serie A, MLS, or Italian pop music news when I needed a break.
Grazie mille!
This project would not have been possible without the funding I
received from several sources at UCLA. I received the Eugene V. Cota-
Robles Fellowship from the Graduate Division; the Quinn Fellowship and
a travel research grant from the History Department; the Penny Kanner
Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Center for the Study of Women;
and a Summer FLAS Language Grant from the UCLA Center for
European and Russian Studies. I would also like to thank the History
Department for providing me with funding to present my research at
several conferences.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents. They have always been there
for me, providing me with guidance and cheering me on in my academic
and non-academic pursuits. I would not be where I am today without
their unflagging love and support. Thank you, I love you guys so much!
Contents
1 Introduction: Italy and the Arrival of Mrs. Consumer 1
Part I 25
2 How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and

Americanizing the Mondadori Publishing Company’s
Magazine Division 27
3 How to Shop and Dress like Mrs. Consumer: Rebuilding

La Rinascente the American Way 51
Part II 87
4 How to Shop, Store, and Cook Food like

Mrs. Consumer: The Refrigerator, Women, and
the Italian Home 89
5 How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American

Beauty and Italian Women127
xi
xii Contents
Part III 163
6 The Catholic and Communist Mrs. Consumer165
7 Were They Really Mrs. Consumers?191
8 Conclusion219
Index227
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 La Rinascente, Milano Piazza del Duomo, Before Bombing in

August 1943. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente,
Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy) 56
Fig. 3.2 La Rinascente, Milano Piazza del Duomo, Damage from
Bombing in August 1943. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La
Rinascente, Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy) 57
Fig. 3.3 La Rinascente, Milano Piazza del Duomo, Damage from
Bombing in August 1943. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La
Rinascente, Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy) 58
Fig. 3.4 The American Department Store, Escalator at Foley’s,
Houston, Texas. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente,
Fig. 3.5 The American Department Store, Window Display, Lord and
Taylor, New York. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente,
Fig. 3.6 La Rinascente, Milano Piazza del Duomo, Window Display,
1950, Cronache della Rinascente-UPIM, Ottobre-Dicembre
1950, Anno IV, N. 4. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente,
Fig. 3.7 Items for Sale, “Un mese d’America,” Cronache della
Rinascente-UPIM 1958–1959, Primavera 1958, Anno XI, n. 9,
14–15. (Source: Archivio Brustio-La Rinascente, Università
Bocconi, Milano, Italy) 75
Fig. 4.1 Frigidaire “Sheer Look” Advertisement. (Source: Apparecchi
elettrodomestici, Febbraio 1957) 106
Fig. 4.2 Ignis “In Happy Hours” Advertisement. (Source: La Cucina
Italiana, Gennaio 1958) 107
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 4.3 Ignis “La tecnica … i vantaggi” Advertisement. (Source: La

Cucina Italiana, Giugno 1975) 109
Fig. 5.1 Max Factor Pan-Stik Advertisement. (Source: Annabella, 21
ottobre 1951) 135
Fig. 5.2 Revlon “Million Dollar Look” Advertisement. (Source:
Annabella, 27 ottobre 1963) 141
Fig. 5.3 Revlon “Cleopatra Look” Advertisement. (Source: Annabella,
4 novembre 1962) 145
Fig. 5.4 OMO “Credevo che la mia camicia fosse pulita” Advertisement.
(Source: Annabella, 17 gennaio 1954) 151
Fig. 5.5 Colgate “Fino a quale distanza” Advertisement. (Source:
Annabella, 23 maggio 1968) 154
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Italy and the Arrival

of Mrs. Consumer
On December 30, 1963, RAI—Italy’s national public broadcasting com-

pany—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—ordi-
nary, 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
© The Author(s) 2020 1

J. L. Harris, Italian Women’s Experiences with American Consumer
Culture, 1945–1975, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47825-4_1
2 J. L. HARRIS
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 indus-
trial sector’s increased production and particularly exports to other mem-
bers 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 indus-
trial production and rising incomes, other important factors that charac-
terized 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 coun-
try, 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 move-
ment 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 dra-
matically 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 exam-
ple, 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
1 INTRODUCTION: ITALY AND THE ARRIVAL OF MRS. CONSUMER 3
consumer society in the postwar period. These economic factors com-

bined 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 con-
sumerism, 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 per-
sons per room) and ate very poorly.”10 Although 65.7 percent of the fami-
lies 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.
4 J. L. HARRIS
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 coun-
tries 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 con-
nection 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 con-
cepts—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 adminis-
ter 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 trans-
formation 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 demo-
cratic 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 variety of American products
(beauty and hygiene products and the refrigerator) and models (the
department store, supermarket, and glossy magazine) that were present in
Italy with an analysis of Italian women’s narratives of their experiences
with the culture. In so doing, this book sheds new light on the culture’s
comprehensive presence in postwar Italian society, reveals how these
women dealt with this new and wide-ranging presence, and analyzes the
effectiveness of American consumer culture in transforming Italian wom-
en’s everyday lives and their identities.
To comprehend the novelty and importance of this arrival and women’s
reactions to it, it is necessary to understand the consumer societies and
political cultures of Italy and the United States before the end of the
Second World War, their encounters and intersections, and the role of
women within each.
6 J. L. HARRIS
Consumerism and Women in the United States

and Italy, 1920s–1940s
The First World War was the decisive event that changed the nature of the
relationship between the United States and Europe that had characterized
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this period, Europe was
the superior partner in the relationship. But, with the fighting of the war
on European soil and the late entry of the United States (the United
States did not officially join the war until 1917), Europe was devastated
while the United States was left practically unscathed. As the European
nations were faced with the task of rebuilding, the United States was able
to continue on the path of industrialization, urbanization, and moderniza-
tion that had begun at the turn of the twentieth century and that prom-
ised to increase America’s standing on the world stage.
As a result, after the First World War, the United States became the
world’s leading economic producer due to the spread of important devel-
opments in industrial production spearheaded by Henry Ford and
Frederick Winslow Taylor before the war, such as the assembly line, scien-
tific management, and standardization, throughout American work-
places.17 In addition to raising the United States’ global economic position,
these developments allowed for companies to mass produce goods—in
larger numbers, in a shorter amount of time, and at a better cost to both
producer and consumer—which, in turn, led to the emergence of a new
mass commercial culture in the States. New technologically advanced and
more affordable products, such as the radio, car, and Hollywood films,
were produced and proliferated throughout American society. So too did
new forms of leisure—sports, dance halls, and amusement parks. These
consumer products and ways of enjoying life embodied the prosperity and
spirit of fun characteristic of the so-called Roaring Twenties.
More importantly, this commercial culture offered new social and cul-
tural experiences to groups of Americans who previously had been par-
tially or completely excluded from participating in nineteenth-century
American commercial society. This was particularly true for women, espe-
cially of the middle and working classes, who had the doors to a more
open and less regulated commercial public sphere opened to them for the
first time. Because of this opportunity, a markedly different woman
emerged—the Modern Girl. This woman was distinct from her earlier
counterparts in that she was independent, publicly visible, urban, fashion-
able, and immersed in the burgeoning commercial and consumer
societies. The Modern Girl spread throughout American society as her

image appeared in magazines and Hollywood films. Despite the isolation-
ist stance in the political realm, commercially, the United States was any-
thing but isolationist as the country’s businesses exported the new
American commercial culture around the globe. Italy was one of the many
countries in which interwar American films, fashion styles, and leisure life-
styles landed.
Disorder, disillusionment, and disunity characterized the initial years
after the First World War in Italy. First, the country experienced a civil war
in which the threat of a Bolshevik revolution was more real than ever,
workers occupied factories while peasants occupied land, and street vio-
lence broke out between protesters and the Fascist squadristi (military like
squads). These occupations revealed these groups’ discontent with and
desires to abolish the capitalist system. Second, Italians were disillusioned
with Italian politicians because of the so-called mutilated peace that had
been secured at the Paris Peace Conference. As a result, there was a certain
sense of alienation among Italians from the parliamentary system. Third,
divisions within and among political parties of the Left developed and
prevented the creation of a united leftist front to block the rise of the
Fascist movement which was gaining popularity by exploiting the disorder
and discontent. These political divisions, disorderly atmosphere, and sense
of disillusionment created an opening for Benito Mussolini, a leader with
a new dynamic political style, to emerge and gain control of the country.
Mussolini came to power on October 30, 1922, when he was appointed
prime minister by King Vittorio Emanuele III, and began to consolidate
his power three years later. As leader of Italy, Mussolini sought to organize
consent and instill Fascist values—blind faith in the state, regimentation,
and male virility—in the Italian people, in other words to fascistize Italians.
What did this mean for Italian women, especially in light of the arrival and
growing popularity of American cultural and aesthetic models?
Although the new commercial cultures and the urban Modern Girl
coming from the United States promoted a certain collectivity that
appealed to the regime, they also promoted individuality, which threat-
ened Mussolini’s control over women.18 The new dance halls, movie the-
aters, and department stores encouraged Italian women of the lower and
working classes to leave the private sphere—the traditional realm of the
home—and to venture out into the public sphere for the first time, on a
more regular basis, and in larger numbers without patriarchal figures to
enjoy the new leisure activities of the period and lifestyles that
8 J. L. HARRIS
accompanied them. Furthermore, new styles in dress and beauty which

showed off a woman’s figure, according to Fascist officials, created an
“aesthetic mayhem” that needed to be stamped out.19 In response, there-
fore, Mussolini promoted a different female model for lower class women
that was clearly in contrast to the American Modern Girl, or as the regime
referred to her, the donna crisi (“crisis woman”). The ideal Fascist woman
became the “authentic woman” or donna madre—a robust, fertile, rural
mother and housewife whose place was in the home and that wore austere,
traditional attire.20
As evidence of the many contradictions inherent in the Fascist regime,
Italian women of the upper class were somewhat exempted from this
forced ideal. The continual presence and promotion of the American
Modern Girl and Hollywood film star in popular women’s magazines,
such as Lei, throughout most of the 1930s illustrates that “well-to-do,”
privileged women were “able [or even allowed] to shrug off the patriar-
chal regime, Catholic conservatism and [embrace] consumerism.”
Furthermore, they “poked fun at the primitivism of the rural massaia
[(housewife)]—their female counterpart, celebrated by the Duce, as the
submissive woman working in the house and bearing many children.”21
This exemption can therefore be seen as pointing to a continuity between
the pre- and post-Second World War periods in Italy in regard to the
popularity and influence of American female aesthetic models and their
ability to resist efforts to completely extinguish their presence.
In addition to creating and promoting the ideal Fascist woman so as to
smother American influences on the lower and working-class Italian female
image, Mussolini also began to impose restrictions on foreign cultural
products. For example, in 1938 the regime passed the Monopoly Law, a
protectionist measure that “gave the Italian company ENIC (Ente
Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche) a monopoly on the purchase,
import and distribution in Italy and its colonies of all foreign films.”22 In
response, Hollywood producers decided to pull out of the Italian market
thereby greatly reducing the number of American films in Italy, and hence
the presence of images of the donna crisi. The promotion of the donna
madre and the restrictions on films were signs of Mussolini’s desire to
control American commercial culture in order to create consensus and
illustrate his authority over Italians. Furthermore, these actions and the
start of the Second World War led to the overall decreased presence of
American consumer culture in Italy. It would not be until after the war
when American female consumer culture would regain a significant posi-
tion in the Italian peninsula.
After the Second World War

Once again, a world war redefined the relationship between the United
States and Europe, in general, and between the United States and Italy,
specifically. As aforementioned, Italy and the United States emerged
from the Second World War on completely different levels. The stagger-
ing differences between prosperity and poverty also applied to the posi-
tion of each country’s female population. In the United States, white
middle- class, suburban women, in contrast to minority women and
those who lived in the city or in rural areas, were riding the wave of a
booming economy and benefiting from a mass consumer society. These
women had the most technologically advanced appliances in their
homes, shopped at modern commercial centers, department stores, and
supermarkets, and had a disposable income that allowed them to pur-
chase consumer goods that satisfied their individual desires for comfort,
leisure, and happiness.
In contrast, the majority of Italian women faced the difficult and daunt-
ing challenge of rebuilding their lives and country after a devastating war.
Thus, in this period, women’s lives were marked by adversity and depriva-
tion. Clearly, the female heads of these families did not enjoy the same
suburban comforts as their American counterparts, live in comparable
modern residential spaces, or have as varied a diet as the white middle-class
American women who shopped at supermarkets. Simply put, they were
not the housewives of the American suburbs.
Because of this stark contrast, American female cultural models, ideas,
and images assumed primacy in the female consumer cultural aspect of the
postwar US-Italy relationship. This meant that the modern white middle-
class suburban American housewife—Mrs. Consumer, the female repre-
sentative of US democratic consumer capitalism—became a role model for
Italian women. The introduction of products belonging to Mrs. Consumer
to Italy beginning in the mid to late 1950s, such as technologically
advanced domestic appliances and beauty products, as well as the transfer
of popular American or American-inspired institutions of consumption to
the country, such as supermarkets and department stores, had a profound
impact on first, upper and upper middle-class Italian women and then on
middle- and working-class women.
10 J. L. HARRIS
How did Italian women respond to the new culture, its products, and
the different lifestyle it promoted? In memoirs and oral histories of Italian
women who lived during the period examined for the book,23 the arrival
of American consumer products and culture represents a marked differ-
ence from their lives during the war and in the immediate postwar period.
The increased availability and abundance of refrigerators, televisions,
washing machines, and other modern products coming from the United
States were dramatically different from the poverty and scarcity in which
they had lived or were still living. As such, the women express a recogni-
tion of America as bringing modernity and a better standard of living
made possible through the acquisition of these goods.
American consumer products and culture had both a physical and men-
tal impact on these women in a variety of arenas and ways, as well as in
varying degrees depending on their class status and geographical location,
such as city or countryside. Italian women who were among the first to
purchase these “goods of modernity” experienced an immediate change
to their daily lives. For women who were not able to immediately acquire
them, the presence of these products in stores as well as their promotion
in magazines, in the press, and above all, in American films, oriented them
to aspire to purchase them and engage in the so-called “American way of
life.” Overall, the products and institutions challenged traditional and
contemporary notions regarding women’s societal roles and transformed
the ways in which these women styled themselves and their homes,
shopped, and ultimately, how they identified themselves.
In this book, when discussing Italian women, I am referring to those
primarily of the urban upper middle, middle, and working classes. The
consumer products and institutions examined in this book—popular
weekly women’s magazines, the refrigerator, the department store, and
beauty and hygiene products—were targeted at women from these social
classes. While women from the first two classes were able to purchase the
goods relatively soon after their arrival in Italy, working-class women’s
acquisition of American consumer modernity occurred later due to their
limited financial resources. Despite this restriction, these women were
nonetheless influenced by the images of the “American way of life” that
permeated their daily lives. Geographically, Italy’s growing urban centers,
especially those in the North such as Milan, were the first places in the
country to undergo the postwar modernization process, including the sig-
nificant cultural and social transformations that American mass consumer
capitalism engendered. Therefore, Italian women living and/or working
in the country’s main northern cities were the first to be exposed to the
new cultural models and products. Furthermore, they were the first to
confront and deal with the challenges and opportunities that American
consumer culture created.
While women living in rural areas or the South were exposed to the
culture later than their northern urban counterparts, those women who
migrated north encountered American consumer culture much sooner.
Significant migration of southern Italians to the North to work in the
country’s burgeoning industrial sector occurred in this postwar period,
marking one of the most significant population shifts in Italy’s history.
And these southern migrants’ labor fueled the economic miracle and the
country’s dramatic transformation.
This book examines multiple areas of influence, divided into two cate-
gories: first, the models of consumption—American-style glossy maga-
zines and American-style shopping at department stores and supermarkets;
and second, the actual objects of consumption—fashion, refrigerators,
beauty and hygiene products—and how women came into contact with
these new models and products, whether it be through advertisements or
fairs. Furthermore, this book also analyzes the ways in which these objects
and models were promoted to Italian women. Looking at the presence
and discussion of American female consumer culture in various areas of
Italian print media, such as in women, domestic appliance trade, and culi-
nary magazines, as well as examining archival material of Italian companies
(Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and La Rinascente) that were at the fore-
front of the country’s economic miracle, illustrates the breadth and com-
plexity of American female consumer culture’s presence in postwar Italy.
These sources lend insight into the effect that this culture wanted to have
on Italian women in both the public and private spheres. The other sources
examined in this book, memoirs and oral histories of Italian women, pro-
vide a reality check to this desired effect.
Americanization or Italianization?
American female consumer culture entered Italy through various ave-
nues—print media, films and television, stores, and trade fairs, for exam-
ple—in the postwar period. Whereas US companies sent their products to
Italy, as did cosmetic manufacturers Max Factor and Elizabeth Arden,
Italian entrepreneurs also played an important role in bringing American
consumer culture to Italy and introducing it to the country’s women. This
12 J. L. HARRIS
book highlights the concerted efforts of Italian entrepreneurs Arnoldo

Mondadori, founder and owner of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Umberto
and Cesare Brustio and Aldo Borletti of La Rinascente, and Giovanni
Borghi of Ignis to modernize their companies and products according to
American standards and models. These men actively sought out American
consumer modernity and technology, traveling to the United States to
research the latest developments in the publishing, retail, and domestic
appliance sectors, as well as wisely positioning themselves to benefit from
the deluge of postwar American financial aid. By bringing American con-
sumer culture to Italy, they played an important part in prompting signifi-
cant social, cultural, and economic changes in their country.
This transnational transfer of models and products, and the entrepre-
neurs’ actions, points to an important topic in studies on the global diffu-
sion of American culture in the twentieth century: the power of American
cultural products and models and the extent of “Americanization.”
According to D. W. Ellwood, in The Shock of America: Europe and the
Challenge of the Century, the “American way of life,” and hence its cul-
ture, “expressed powers more difficult to deal with than the variety Bought
by their dollars or manipulated by their national security state after World
War II.”24 Therefore, many studies explore how the receiving countries
responded to American culture’s invasion in order to understand if a com-
plete process of “Americanization” did indeed occur. On one side, schol-
ars discuss the spread of US culture in imperialistic terms, contending that
American culture was an all-consuming, overwhelming power that dic-
tated the likes, dislikes, and norms of the local population. For example,
Victoria De Grazia’s Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through
Twentieth Century Europe employs an informal imperial framework and
the term Market Empire to demonstrate how America through culture,
rather than through foreign policy and military actions, transformed
Europeans’ consumption habits and way of life. She argues that America’s
hegemony over Europe derived from its consumer society. It was the
Market Empire’s modern consuming practices that successfully challenged
and defeated old European bourgeois consumption patterns and commer-
cial civilization. Thus, the spread of American-style consumerism to
Europe provided for the country’s dominant global position throughout
the twentieth century.
On the other side, scholars argue that the reality was more complex and
that locals were not doormats, but rather had an active role in accepting
what they liked and rejecting what they did not like. Rob Kroes, in
Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe,

focuses on the European reception of American culture, using the concept
of creolization as a way to understand this process. He argues that while
American culture did engender a change in European society, the “receiv-
ers of American cultural forms adapted them to meet their own needs”
resulting in the Europeanization of American products.25 This method of
cultural appropriation is a more suitable descriptive since Europeans were
less likely to be steam rolled by American culture and were more likely to
appropriate aspects that they found appealing. Therefore, understanding
“Americanization” as a mediation, as he suggests, rather than a totalizing
process allows for a nuanced analysis of the reception of American culture.26
This book’s discussion of Italian women’s response to mass American
consumer culture and of the Italian entrepreneurs’—Umberto and Cesare
Brustio and Aldo Borletti and Giovanni Borghi—actions provides evi-
dence for the latter argument. While American female consumer culture
and its messages were wide-ranging and very popular, it did not erase the
distinct Italian traits, habits, and traditions of the women in the study. In
addition to the women themselves, who either consciously or not main-
tained their “Italianness,” Italian entrepreneurs played a role in preventing
American consumer culture’s complete takeover of Italian cultural habits
and identities. As enthusiastic as these men were for American consumer
modernity, they recognized that an exact replica of the American model of
the refrigerator or department store was not suitable for the Italian market
due to important social, cultural, and economic differences between the
United States and Italy. Therefore, the Brustios, Borletti, and Borghi
adapted the American model, using the best and most appropriate aspects
and discarding those that did not fit the Italian context. American con-
sumer culture’s arrival in Italy, facilitated by these men’s and other entre-
preneurs’ actions, did not result in a complete “Americanization” of
Italian society and culture, but rather an “Italianization” of American
culture.
In examining the period 1945–1975, this book goes beyond the typical
time frame of most studies dealing with the postwar American cultural
influence on Italy and/or the postwar development of a mass consumer-
oriented Italy, which end their analyses at or around 1965. While Italy’s
economic miracle took place from 1958, the first moments of significant
change in the country’s GDP and of increased industrial production, to
1962/1963, the first instances of a resurgence of northern industrial
worker protests, it is important to investigate the place of American female
14 J. L. HARRIS
consumer culture in Italian women’s lives after the “miracle,” especially in

light of important social, cultural, and economic events that occurred at
the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. These include the continuation and
growth of factory workers’ struggles, as well as the rise of protest move-
ments—the student and women’s movements—that called into question
the values of consumerism and the lifestyle it had promoted and created
for Italians. The oil and energy crises and stagflation of the 1970s, that
marked the end of rapid economic growth and a society built around con-
sumerism, are other important events of this period. Because of these sig-
nificant ideological transformations among Italians as well as the downturn
in the Italian economy, 1975 serves as the ending point of the analysis.
Extending the chronological span allows one to see the changing nature
of Mrs. Consumer’s image, message, and impact on Italian society
throughout the late 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s—decades that
witnessed the rise and fall of Mrs. Consumer and her consumer capitalist-
based way of life.
The three decades after the war in Italy were also a time of an intense
domestic political, social, and cultural struggle for influence over Italians
fought between the Catholic Church and the DC on one side and the PCI
on the other. The invasion of American culture in Italy beginning in the
1950s posed a significant threat to these groups’ societal influence.
Furthermore, this presence, along with US financial aid and political sup-
port, transformed this internal struggle into an international Cold War
battle with potentially important global implications. While numerous
studies have examined the role that American culture had in this internal
conflict, very few have analyzed the role of American female consumer
culture.27 This book considers this important aspect of Italy’s cultural
Cold War by analyzing Communist and Catholic positions on Mrs.
Consumer and her products in Italy that were put forth in each group’s
popular periodicals. Further, the study puts these positions in conversation
with each other, highlighting areas of agreement and disagreement
between the two groups, and illustrating the ways in which Communists
and Catholics responded to this threat to their desired hegemony over
Italians.
Structure of the Book and Chapter Outline

This book is structured in three parts. Part I—Chaps. 2 and 3—explores
the transfer of models of American consumption to Italy and the signifi-
cant role that Italian entrepreneurs played in this process. Chapter 2,
“How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and Americanizing the
Mondadori Publishing Company’s Magazine Division,” examines the
postwar reconstruction and modernization of the magazine division of
one of Italy’s top publishing companies, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.
This division published the most popular Italian weekly women’s maga-
zine in the postwar period, Grazia: un’amica al vostro fianco. Arnoldo
Mondadori’s strategy for making his company, including its magazine
division, one of the leading publishing houses in postwar Italy consisted of
modernizing the publication production process and the magazines them-
selves along American lines. For the production process, Mondadori
bought the latest, most technologically advanced printing machines from
the United States with Marshall Plan funds. For the magazines’ layout and
content, he took numerous trips to the United States, both alone and with
his son Giorgio, to scout American publishing companies. Additionally, he
established an office in New York, with an Italian woman, Natalia Danesi
Murray, as head of the office, to facilitate the development of relationships
with these companies. The most important aspect of Mondadori’s strategy
was his courting of the US Ambassador to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce
(1953–1956), and her world-famous publishing tycoon husband, Henry
R. Luce, head of Time Inc., which published the groundbreaking Time,
Life, and Fortune magazines.
These interactions with the American publishing world modernized
and Americanized, to Mondadori’s specifications, the company and its
periodicals. For example, the magazines’ layouts resembled that of their
American counterparts. Furthermore, Mondadori’s courting of the Luces
immersed him, and his company, in the politics of the United States’ anti-
Communist approach toward Italy. As a result, his magazines became, at
times, items of Cold War propaganda containing pro-American content
that reflected positively on the United States’ democratic consumer capi-
talist society. The resemblance in regard to layout and content was true for
Mondadori’s Grazia: un’amica al vostro fianco, which highlighted the best
of American female consumer culture in its articles, advertisements, and
photo spreads. Therefore, Mondadori’s actions facilitated the transfer of
female consumer cultural products and models from the United States to
16 J. L. HARRIS
Italy, laying the foundation for changes to Italian women’s cultural and
social identities.
Chapter 3, “How to Shop and Dress like Mrs. Consumer: Rebuilding
La Rinascente the American Way,” explores the presence of American
retail models in the postwar reconstruction and modernization of the
Italian department store, La Rinascente. The department store was a site
of consumption that had women at the center; they were the main cus-
tomers, as well as the primary employees. In this sense, this commercial
institution was indeed a “ladies’ paradise.”28 This chapter provides an in-
depth look at the reconstruction of La Rinascente’s flagship store located
in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo. In 1943, this store, along with much of
Milan, was nearly completely destroyed by Allied bombing. La Rinascente’s
managers, Umberto and Cesare Brustio and Aldo Borletti, like Mondadori,
used the United States, in particular its modern department stores, as the
source of inspiration and as a model for rebuilding the Milan store. They
incorporated multiple characteristics of the department stores they visited
during a research trip to the United States taken in the fall of 1948 into
the newly rebuilt store. These characteristics included interior design
schemes, exterior decorative and architectural styles, department layouts,
and modern technology, such as air conditioning and the escalator, all
coming from the United States. They also implemented a new customer
service method they observed in the United States—“going to the cus-
tomer”—or in other words, putting the customer first and catering to her
every need.
American influence did not solely exist in the store’s layout, interior
decorations, and exterior appearance, but in the products for sale as well.
La Rinascente prominently featured American merchandise, including
American cosmetics and the latest, most modern trend in fashion:
American designed and inspired mass-produced ready-to-wear garments.
The Brustios and Borletti were responsible for bringing American con-
sumer products to Italian women and teaching them how to comprare
all’americana (to shop and buy the American way), in effect transforming
Italian women’s shopping bags and experiences.
La Rinascente’s directors incorporated these American aspects, but
combined it with Italian “intuition and taste,” maintaining a certain itali-
anità (Italian character) and making the store appealing to Italian prefer-
ences. The directors’ adaptations of the modern American department
store resulted in La Rinascente’s financial success in the postwar period,
rendering the store one of the postwar Italian symbols of rebirth, a symbol
that had American consumer modernity at its core.
Part II—Chaps. 4 and 5—looks at important US commodities present
in postwar Italian consumer culture, namely the refrigerator, cosmetics,
and hygiene products. It analyzes the products’ messages and models pro-
moted to Italian women, as well as their intended influence on Italian
women’s lives and identities. Chapter 4, “How to Shop, Store, and Cook
Food like Mrs. Consumer: The Refrigerator, Women, and the Italian
Home,” serves as a bridge between Parts I and II of this book. Examining
the arrival and diffusion of the refrigerator, an American invention, in
Italy, this chapter discusses the efforts of Giovanni Borghi, head of the
Italian domestic appliance company Ignis, to bring American modernity
to his company and its refrigerators. The first refrigerators in Italy were
American exports that were made in the United States and designed for
American homes. Thus, they were very expensive and too large for Italian
homes’ much smaller culinary spaces. Only wealthy Italians were able to
purchase this bulky and costly luxury. Recognizing that the American
model’s size and price placed the device beyond the grasp of the majority
of Italians, Borghi, as well as other Italian refrigerator manufacturers,
adapted the device to fit the Italian context. They reduced the refrigera-
tor’s size and made it more compact, so as to fit Italy’s smaller, less roomy
kitchens, and reduced the price, so as to be affordable for Italian incomes
that, although on the rise, were still lower than American earnings. In so
doing, Borghi and other manufacturers democratized these luxury con-
sumer items, making them affordable to a broader range of Italians.
This chapter also analyzes the refrigerator’s impact on the relationship
between Italian women, the home, and food. The refrigerator’s arrival in
Italy in the mid-1950s forever changed the way women shopped for food,
their traditional food preparation habits, and their domestic kitchens.
While these changes occurred, bringing Italian women into a modern and
technologically advanced world, refrigerator advertisements, articles on
the device in the popular press and industry magazines, and publicity
material that spoke to women’s relationship with the appliance, did not
always promote modern and progressive female societal roles. Instead, the
messages and images contained in this material promoted the image of the
“angel of the hearth,” the traditional casalinga (housewife), who was ded-
icated to the home, to being a mother and wife, and nothing else. In this
manner, the refrigerator assisted in reinforcing Catholic and Fascist notions
promoting traditional gender roles that tied women to the home.
18 J. L. HARRIS
Chapter 5, “How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American Beauty

and Italian Women,” investigates one of the most noticeable changes to
Italian women’s physical appearance in the postwar period: the increased
use of beauty and hygiene products—lipstick, face powder, nail polish,
soap, and detergent. In Fascist Italy, cosmetics were looked down upon by
the regime and the Catholic Church, and makeup use was limited, being
primarily worn by the rebellious Modern Girls who wanted to create a
modern personality for themselves, and women of ill-repute, who applied
makeup in much heavier doses to indicate their chosen profession.
However, after the Second World War, wearing makeup and being clean
became important components of Italians’ idea of beauty. As such, makeup
use and using detersivi (detergents) and toothpaste spread throughout
Italy’s social classes and became a necessary requirement for any woman
who wanted to be seen as being beautiful, self-assured, and modern.
The flood of American and American influenced beauty and hygiene
products into postwar Italy contributed to this significant change in beauty
ideals. Beauty products from American companies, such as Max Factor,
Elizabeth Arden, and Revlon, made up a significant portion of cosmetics
in postwar Italy and thus, had a primary role in influencing Italians’
notions of beauty. Numerous products designed to illustrate one’s good
hygienic habits, such as Colgate Toothpaste, also had the same effect.
Italian women encountered the new, American influenced image of beauty
in popular weekly women’s magazines, which themselves experienced
great growth and popularity following the war. Articles, beauty columns,
and advertisements spelled out what beauty was for readers and “schooled”
them in how to achieve the American influenced Italian beauty ideal. In
analyzing the images and words of beauty and hygiene product advertise-
ments from one of the most popular women’s magazines of the period,
Annabella, this chapter articulates the components of this ideal and illus-
trates how these notions broke with traditional ideas of Italian beauty.
Moreover, this chapter also examines how this new ideal promoted demo-
cratic consumer capitalist values—freedom of choice, individualism, and
affluence—that stood in stark contrast to Communist values and their per-
ceived threat to the democratic, capitalist West.
Part III—Chaps. 6 and 7—examines the responses to the invasion of
American consumer culture by two important Italian cultural and political
institutions—the Catholic Church and the Unione delle Donne Italiane
(UDI), a women’s collateral organization of the Italian Communist
Party—and by Italian women themselves. In so doing, the chapters
evaluate the power and effect of American consumerism and its attendant
models of femininity in Cold War Italy. Chapter 6, “The Catholic and
Communist Mrs. Consumer,” examines American consumer culture’s
implications for Italy’s internal social and cultural struggle between the
PCI and the Catholic Church. Specifically, it looks at how two prominent
magazines, the Communist women’s magazine Noi Donne and the
Catholic family magazine Famiglia Cristiana, reacted to and dealt with
the growing presence of American female consumer culture, specifically
that of beauty, entertainment and celebrity, and shopping, in their readers’
lives. Noi Donne and Famiglia Cristiana made sense of the changes for
their readers and advised them on the “proper” path to modernity accord-
ing to their specific ideological orientations.
The immense popularity of American consumer culture among Italian
women represented a significant threat to Communist and Catholic influ-
ences. Both groups feared this popularity would lead to the decline in their
own popularity and authority in Italian society, making them irrelevant in
an increasingly modernizing society. The threat was so great that the social
and cultural fight for the hearts and minds of Italians became a three-way
struggle between the Communists, Catholics, and American consumer
culture, with American consumer modernity assuming the position of
shared enemy of the two Italian groups. As threatening as this new culture
was to Communist and Catholic hegemony, neither Noi Donne nor
Famiglia Cristiana could risk to completely reject American female con-
sumer culture. Thus, both publications incorporated its products, mes-
sages, and images into their pages, mediating them through Communist
and Catholic lenses in order to make them suitable for readers. Ultimately,
the two magazines promoted a modern, consuming Italian woman who
still represented core Communist or Catholic beliefs.
Chapter 7, “Were They Really Mrs. Consumers?,” analyzes the words
of ordinary Italian women as represented in memoirs and oral histories to
understand if Italian women really became the American Mrs. Consumer.
In other words, did these Italian female consumers readily adopt all of the
American female consumer models and behaviors that were introduced to
postwar Italy? By highlighting their experiences with the topics discussed
in the previous chapters—American shopping, beauty and hygiene,
domestic appliances and the home—this chapter evaluates the extent to
which these models influenced and changed their everyday lives.
Furthermore, this chapter examines the ways in which this new American
consumer culture affected how these women identified themselves. The
20 J. L. HARRIS
consumer culture did enact significant changes in these women’s everyday

lives, however, it did not result in a complete transformation of how they
identified themselves. While the women testify to the fact that they were
attracted by and engaged in the new culture, as well as sought to emulate
its female models, they did not become American Mrs. Consumers. For a
variety of reasons these women adapted certain aspects of American con-
sumer culture while maintaining their own culture, in effect becoming
Italian Mrs. Consumers.
American consumer culture’s arrival in postwar Italy prompted signifi-
cant social and cultural changes in Italy, as is presented in Milano così. For
Italian women, American female consumer products and models pro-
foundly affected their lives and altered their identities in this period. By
examining the intersection of American female consumer culture, domes-
tic (Italian) and international Cold War politics, and Italian women, this
book offers new insight into the cultural, political, and economic relation-
ship between the United States and Italy, and how that relationship
affected Italy’s development and its citizens after the Second World War.
Notes
1. Milano così, Tv7, Rai Uno, 30/12/1963, accessed November 10, 2015,
http://www.teche.rai.it/2015/12/natale-a-milano-1963/
2. Spencer M. Di Scala (2004, 302).
3. Paul Ginsborg writes, “Above all, exports became the driving sector behind
expansion, with an average increase of 14.5 per cent per annum. The effect
of the Common Market was clear for all to see: the percentage of Italian
goods destined for the EEC countries rose from 23 per cent in 1955 to
29.8 per cent in 1960 and 40.2 per cent in 1965.” Paul Ginsborg
(2003, 214).
4. Ibid., 239.
5. In regard to migration, between 1955 and 1971, 9,140,000 Italians
migrated within the country. In Milan, in particular, approximately 70 per-
cent of migrants to the city from 1953 to 1963 were from rural locations.
Ibid., 212–219.
6. Gary Cross (2000, 84); Eric Foner (1998, 264); Mary Nolan (2012, 170).
7. Richard F. Kuisel provides a good explanation of the multifaceted postwar
US mass consumer society. He writes “America represented the coming
‘consumer society.’ This term suggested not just the mass purchase of stan-
dardized products of American origins or design such as Kodak cameras or
jeans; it also denoted a style of life that encompassed new patterns of
spending, higher wage levels, and greater social mobility. It featured new
forms of economic organization including different kinds of industrial rela-
tions, business management, and markets. And the new consumerism
depended on different cultural values. Consumer society suggested a life
oriented around acts of purchase and a materialistic philosophy. It valued
the productive and the technical and was accompanied by the products of
the new mass culture, from Hollywood films and comic strips to home
appliances and fast food” (Richard Kuisel 1993, 3).
8. Nolan (2012, 168).
9. Ginsborg (2003, 94, 96).
10. Perry Willson (2010, 112).
11. Ibid.
12. D.W. Ellwood (1995, 34).
13. Ellwood (2012, 363).
14. Ginsborg (2003, 103, 115).
15. Francis Stonor Saunders (1999).
16. Ellwood (2012, 367, 368).
17. Regina Lee Blaszczyk (2009, 95).
18. Victoria De Grazia (1992, 203).
19. Ibid., 212.
20. Ibid.
21. Maria Antonella Pelizzari (2015, 40–41).
22. David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle (2007, 207).
23. The thirty memoirs and oral histories come from the Archivio Diaristico
Nazionale and Memoro.org/it. The main criterion for selecting the narra-
tives was year of birth, with the 1930s being the primary decade of interest,
as well as searching for key terms (boom economico (“economic boom”),
frigorifero (“refrigerator”)) related to the main topics of this book and
postwar consumerism in the databases’ search engines.
24. Ellwood (2012, 2).
25. Rob Kroes, “Americanisation: What Are We Talking About?,” in Cultural
Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe, 1993, ix.
26. For more on Europe’s appropriation of American culture see Richard Pells
(1993, 1997).
27. Both Nemici per la pelle: Sogno americano e mito sovietico nell’Italia con-
temporanea (1991) and Stephen Gundle’s Between Hollywood and Moscow:
The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943–1991
(2001) contain some information on the role of the American woman in
Italy’s Cold War struggle.
28. The term “ladies’ paradise” comes from Émile Zola’s 1883 book “The
Ladies’ Paradise” which takes place in a mid to late nineteenth-century
French department store inspired by Paris’s famous Le Bon Marché.
22 J. L. HARRIS
References
TV Programs
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natale-a-milano-1963. Accessed 10 Nov 2015.
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University of California Press.
———. 2005. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth Century
Europe. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Di Scala, Spencer M. Italy From Revolution to Republic: 1700 to the Present, Third
Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 2004.
Ellwood, D.W. 1995. Italy, Europe and the Cold War: The Politics and Economics
of Limited Sovereignty. In In Italy and the Cold War: Politics, Culture, and
Society 1948–58, ed. Christopher Duggan et al., 25–46. Oxford, UK: Berg
Publishers Limited.
———. 2012. The Shock of America: Europe and the Challenge of the Century.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Foner, Eric. 1998. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company.
Forgacs, David, and Stephen Gundle. 2007. Mass Culture and Italian Society:
From Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ginsborg, Paul. 2003. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics
1943–1988. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gundle, Stephen. 2000. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists
and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943–1991. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kroes, Rob, ed. 1993a. Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass
Culture in Europe. Amsterdam: VU University Press.
———. 1993b. Americanisation: What Are We Talking About? In Cultural
Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe, ed. Rob Kroes
et al. Amsterdam: VU University Press.
Kuisel, Richard. 1993. Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization.

Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nolan, Mary. 2012. The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890–2010.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pelizzari, Maria Antonella. 2015. Make-believe: fashion and Cinelandia in Rizzoli’s
Lei (1933–1938). Journal of Modern Italian Studies 20 (1, January): 34–52.
Pells, Richard. 1993. American Culture Abroad: The European Experience Since
1945. In Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in
Europe, ed. Rob Kroes et al. Amsterdam: VU University Press.
———. 1997. Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed
American Culture Since World War II. New York: Basic Books.
Saunders, Francis Stonor. 1999. Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural
Cold War. London: Granta.
Willson, Perry. 2010. Women in Twentieth-Century Italy. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
PART I
CHAPTER 2
How to Read like Mrs. Consumer:

Modernizing and Americanizing
the Mondadori Publishing Company’s
Magazine Division
On a foggy autumn day in 1960, nine smiling, well-dressed Italian corre-

spondents for the Italian weekly women’s magazine Grazia: un’amica al
vostro fianco posed for a picture on Radio City Music Hall’s sixty-fifth floor
panoramic terrace. The group, consisting of editors, photographers, and
stylists, were in New York on assignment for a special issue released in
November of the same year dedicated to the United States and its most
famous and most modern city, New York. In his letter from the editor,
Renato Olivieri trumpeted the 190-page issue calling it the most excep-
tional issue ever seen with special features on the middle-class American
family (claiming Grazia to be the first one in the world to do so), New York
fashion, and the American woman’s beauty routine.1 It was through spe-
cial issues of women’s Italian magazines, such as this one, and special edi-
torial features on the American woman and her lifestyle that Italian women
encountered American culture and the “American way of life” on a weekly
basis in the decades following the Second World War.
Grazia: un’amica al vostro fianco (Grazia for short) was one of the
most popular women’s magazines in the three decades following the war.
Launched in 1938 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, the magazine’s main
intention was to socially and culturally inform the middle-class woman—
to be a friend at the reader’s side (as the periodical’s subtitle states,
un’amica al vostro fianco) guiding her through late 1930s Italy. The
© The Author(s) 2020 27

J. L. Harris, Italian Women’s Experiences with American Consumer
Culture, 1945–1975, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47825-4_2
28 J. L. HARRIS
outbreak of war in 1939 forced Grazia’s suspension until 1946 when it

returned to newsstands following the end of fighting.2 In the postwar
period, modernization and Americanization were synonymous and hence,
led to a modified guiding intention to be adopted by the revived publica-
tion: to “bring [Italian women] to discover the new modernity as enjoyed
by American women with their luxury cars, televisions in every house, big
supermarkets and futuristic household appliances.”3
This new American modernity displayed in the postwar reiteration of
Grazia reflects founder and owner Arnoldo Mondadori’s vision to make
his company “Italy’s most important and largest publisher of books and
magazines,” as well as its most modern by looking overseas for inspira-
tion.4 Mondadori viewed the American publishing industry as the stan-
dard by which all publishing houses should be judged, and thus, made a
concentrated effort to rebuild, modernize, and Americanize his company
and its magazines, including Grazia. Thus, the advanced technology and
modern techniques of production, distribution, advertising, and subscrip-
tion services that periodicals such as Time, Life, and Reader’s Digest used
served as a model for the postwar reconstruction of the firm’s magazine
division.
Mondadori’s modernization and Americanization efforts consisted of
several strategies: buying the most advanced publishing and printing tech-
nology (which happened to be produced in the United States) to be used
in his production facilities; taking trips to the United States to scout the
American publishing industry; establishing an office in New York; cultivat-
ing relationships with American publishing houses; and most importantly,
courting the powerful American publisher, Henry R. Luce, founder of
Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, US
Ambassador to Italy from 1953 to 1956, in order to gain exclusive access
to the inner workings and material of Time Inc. Taking into account
Henry Luce’s strong belief that the United States should spread democ-
racy and free enterprise as it assumed the role of world leader of the twen-
tieth century, and Ambassador Boothe Luce’s fervent anti-Communism,
the last component of this strategy, courting the Luces, put Mondadori
publications at the center of Italy’s cultural Cold War. As such, Mondadori’s
publications became vehicles for promoting the United States and its con-
sumer capitalist democracy.
By modeling his magazines, both in the production phase and in the
finished product, on American periodicals, Arnoldo Mondadori played a
key role in bringing postwar America and its culture to Italy. As a result of
2 HOW TO READ LIKE MRS. CONSUMER: MODERNIZING… 29
his actions, female readers of Mondadori publications, especially that of

Grazia, were exposed to the modern “American way of life” and the con-
sumer products, abundance, and prosperity it entailed, creating new defi-
nitions for Italian women’s domestic and feminine culture that contrasted
with the traditionally more conservative Catholic and Communist models
also competing for prominence in postwar Italy.
The History of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

Arnoldo Mondadori first began working in the publishing industry in
1907 in the town of Ostiglia located in Italy’s wealthy Lombardy region,
printing educational materials as well as literary works.5 Following the
First World War, Mondadori moved the company’s headquarters to Milan
in 1919 and established a printing plant in San Nazaro di Verona. As a
result of this move and the recent publication of several new magazines
that were more dynamic and innovative than his competitors’, the com-
pany became a significant presence in the Italian publishing industry.
Mondadori continued to achieve success in the 1920s by publishing works
of several important Italian writers, such as Gabriele D’Annunzio and
Luigi Pirandello. Furthermore, the establishment of Mondadori Gialli,
the detective series after which an entire genre was named, also brought
recognition and success to the company.6 Despite restrictions imposed by
the Fascist regime regarding the publication of foreign works, Mondadori
was still able to expand and internationalize his company.7 For example, he
established book series—Medusa and Omnibus—which published works
by foreign authors such as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.
Additionally, Mondadori signed an agreement with Walt Disney in 1935
to be the exclusive Italian publisher of Disney cartoons.8 It was these early
connections with the United States that Mondadori would look to build
in the postwar period.
The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted company operations
with bombing raids in Milan forcing Mondadori to move his company
from the city. Eventually, the company stopped production as he and his
family moved to Switzerland when the Fascist regime requisitioned
Mondadori’s new headquarters and editorial offices in September 1943.
At war’s end in 1945, Mondadori returned to Milan, took back ownership
of his company, and became fully committed to modernizing and
Americanizing it so as to bring Mondadori Editore back to and even sur-
pass the prominence and success it enjoyed before the Second World War.9
30 J. L. HARRIS
Mondadori’s Strategy: The Marshall Plan

and American Technology
Mondadori set out to make his company the leading Italian publishing
firm by modeling the company’s organization as well as its magazines’
layout, design, and content on American publishing houses and their
products. In order to achieve this goal, Mondadori, very astutely, posi-
tioned himself and his company to take advantage of the opportunities
made available to Italian businesses by the United States so as to prevent
Italy from going Communist. One such opportunity that Mondadori took
advantage of to rebuild and modernize his company and its publications
was postwar US financial support, especially that coming from the
Marshall Plan.
United States’ financial support toward European recovery had actually
begun during the war with the establishment of the United Nations Relief
and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1943 and continued after
the war’s end, with the United States being the largest contributor. In
regard to the funding scheme’s recipients, Italy was one of its main benefi-
ciaries.10 For example, in 1946, the country received a grant of $450 mil-
lion that “provided seventy percent of Italian food imports and forty
percent of fuel.” It also included “substantial proportions of farm, indus-
trial, and medical imports” as well as coal and cotton supplies.11 While
these early grants to Italy, and Europe in general, appeared to have had a
positive effect as countries, such as Britain and France, recovered quickly,
the harsh winter of 1947 halted this recovery. The resulting economic
downturn combined with widespread hoarding, severe unrest, and
Communist political challenges in several Western European countries
engendered serious concern among American political and military offi-
cials regarding Western Europe’s ability to defend itself against a potential
Communist seizure of power. A State Department document from 1947
illustrates the fear of a financially and socially devastated Europe being a
ripe setting for the Soviet Union to spread its influence and power through
Western Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States:
The staff does not see Communist activities as the root of the present diffi-
culties in Western Europe. It believes the crisis in large part results from the
disruptive effect of the war on the economic, political, and social structure
of Europe … The planning staff recognizes that the Communists are
e xploiting the European crisis and that further Communist successes would
create serious danger to American security.12
Therefore, the European Recovery Program, more commonly known as

the Marshall Plan, was signed into law by the US Congress on April 3,
1948. The government’s goal in providing financial support to Europe
was to create both industrial and moral recovery. More than just supplying
actual money, the Marshall Plan provided much needed goods to ailing
countries in order to restore Western Europeans’ confidence in their
respective governments and thus halt Communism’s spread. Moreover,
the monetary grants and supplies given to Europe by the United States
were significant not only in getting Europe back on its feet but also in
spreading American culture and consumer products and their implied
message of freedom to choose to the Old World.
During the four-year period, 1948–1951, in which the Marshall Plan
operated, Italy received just over $1.2 billion.13 This amount was used on
industrial, agriculture, rail, and public works projects in addition to food
and other critical supplies. Marshall Plan funds were also “supplemented
by private donations,” which were often “immigrant remittances and pri-
vate capital.”14 This funding that Italy received was part of the larger Cold
War political and ideological battle between the United States and the
Communist threat posed by the Soviet Union. D. W. Ellwood asserts that
the Marshall Plan “aimed to get as close as possible to the people it was
benefitting in order to change attitudes, mentalities, and expectations in
the direction of modernization as the Americans understood it.”15 In this
case, modernization meant an American-style consumer capitalist soci-
ety—strong industry, prosperity, abundance, and a higher standard of liv-
ing—very distinct characteristics from Communist society, which
emphasized collectivism and material deprivation. Furthermore, they were
characteristics that Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and its magazines came to
embody as the company began rebuilding after the Second World War.
Mondadori’s postwar reconstruction, modernization, and
Americanization began with two Marshall Plan grants: one of $550,000 in
February 1949 and another of $200,000 in April 1949.16 This money was
used to buy modern printing machines manufactured in the United States,
such as the five-color rotogravure by Hoe and Cottrell, that would not
only be “indispensable in the renewal and strengthening of the Veronese
plant,” but would also distinguish Mondadori periodicals from their com-
petitors.17 In a letter to Kay Kamen, exclusive licensing representative for
32 J. L. HARRIS
the Walt Disney company,18 Arnoldo Mondadori informed him of the new
technology soon to be arriving at the company’s plants:
We are planning now an enormous project for re-edification of our plants in

Verona with American manufactured machines according to the projects
which Giorgio studied during his visit to the U.S.A. À propos, let me thank
you very much for your precious help in that circumstance.
We intend coming to U.S.A. toward the end of this year, that is when all
machines we ordered will be ready for shipment.19
Despite the termination of Marshall Plan funding, the Mondadori

Company continued to purchase and utilize the most technologically
advanced machines from the United States in their printing operations. In
the early 1960s, the company acquired another Cottrell rotary press and
by 1963 Mondadori’s factory in Verona featured new, modern machines,
many of which came from the United States. These included the Sheraton
binder, the ULTRA MAN VII offset feeder, Sheridan-Smith chain for
packaging volumes, and Sheridan harvesting machines.20 In 1974, the
Cameron Book Production System, also coming from the United States,
was established in the company’s factory in Cles, in the province of
Trento.21 Modern printing machines were not the only pieces of advanced
American technology to be found in Mondadori plants. Air conditioning
was installed in the plant in San Michele after Arnoldo’s son, Giorgio,
took note of the cooling system during his first scouting trip of the
American publishing industry in 1948.22 In sum, United States financial
aid facilitated the company’s acquisition of American products which
became one of the key steps in Mondadori’s modernization and
Americanization.
Mondadori’s use of American machines and the considerable effect it
had on the company’s operations, organization, and products reflected a
general trend in postwar Italy among industries that received financial aid
from the United States. As Vera Zamagni has demonstrated, monetary
support of Italian industries and infrastructural development engendered
mass consumerism in Italy and entailed American cultural influence.
Zamagni argues that the American presence in Italy “succeeded in chang-
ing the structure of the Italian economy in the fields of production and
management” making it resemble the United States.23 For example, in
addition to Mondadori, “state-owned enterprises and the largest quasi-
monopolistic private companies,” such as FIAT, Edison, and Montecatini,
were the first to use Marshall Plan money to transform the operations of
their plants. Because of this, the plants’ technology and operations were
no longer unstandardized and de-specialized, and as a result production
began to increase.24 In many cases, Italian firms used American technology
to invigorate the production process. Furthermore, the adoption of
American management practices, such as hire purchase, market research,
job evaluation, work incentives, and productivity bonuses also had this
same effect by making production more efficient, thereby allowing for the
rapid production and increased output of products.25 Moreover, as Penny
Sparke has illustrated, the factories’ adoption of modern American tech-
niques affected the commodities being produced as products such as
Olivetti typewriters, coffee machines, and scooters had designs that
“recalled the idea of American streamlining.”26 In Mondadori’s case, the
firm’s magazines resembled the most popular American magazines in their
design. For example, its magazine Epoca, which was first published in
1950, became the first Italian magazine to use the illustrated journalism
technique popularized by Look and Life magazines.27 Therefore, American
investment in Mondadori and other Italian companies and their factories
made American culture, in the form of industrial models and products, a
growing part of Italian society.
Mondadori’s Strategy: Andiamo in America!28

Traveling to the United States to observe American publishing companies
in their daily operations was another way in which Arnoldo Mondadori
brought American culture to Italy. A total of six trips were taken by either
Arnoldo or his son, Giorgio, in the three decades following the end of the
war. During these trips, the two gained important firsthand knowledge of
the American industry by establishing relationships with the country’s top
publishing companies. The first visit to the United States by a Mondadori
representative occurred in 1948 when Giorgio visited the Walt Disney
Company and the offices of Reader’s Digest. In addition to reestablishing
contact with Disney and signing an agreement for Mondadori to publish
the Italian version of Reader’s Digest (Selezione),29 Giorgio was also tasked
with purchasing printing machines for magazines and bound volumes.30
The year after, Arnoldo made his first trip to the United States with the
goal of making direct contact with publishing houses and learning more
about their managerial organization and production process. Throughout
the 1950s and 1960s, Arnoldo and Giorgio continued to visit American
34 J. L. HARRIS
agencies, acquire American machines, and to sign agreements allowing for

the exchange of material, such as magazine features and book series,
between Mondadori and the American companies.31 These trips were
important in facilitating the arrival and spread of American culture in post-
war Italy.
In addition to traveling to the United States, Mondadori also estab-
lished an office in New York City thereby positioning his company closer
to its American counterparts that he so admired and strove to emulate.
The person in charge of creating and solidifying bonds between Mondadori
and American publishers and making the company “Italy’s most impor-
tant and largest publisher of books and magazines” as well as its most
modern and Americanized was the head of the New York office, Natalia
Danesi Murray.32 Danesi Murray was an Italian journalist born and raised
in Rome who had spent time in the United States in the 1920s while mar-
ried to the American agent and music critic, William B. Murray (the mar-
riage eventually ended in divorce). More significant in relation to her new
position at Mondadori was the work she did for the US press industry and
US government during and after the Second World War: she was employed
by NBC radio news to work on programs sent to Italy; she was the Director
of the Office of War Information’s press bureau in Rome reporting on the
conditions in war-torn Italy; and she was the head of the United States
Information Service’s (USIS) Special Projects Division in Rome.33 These
wartime and postwar positions placed her at the center of the United
States’ propaganda machine, which ardently and zealously promoted
democracy and the idea of freedom to choose to Western Europeans fight-
ing against totalitarian regimes. More importantly, her time working for
the US government exposed her to the cultural techniques and strategies
that could be employed to combat the perceived Communist threat.
Because of this experience, Danesi Murry, as head of Mondadori’s
New York office, played a key role in Americanizing Mondadori maga-
zines and bringing the “American way of life” to their readers.
Beginning work in the New York office in 1951, Arnoldo Mondadori
assigned Natalia Danesi Murray the specific tasks of scouting the American
publishing industry and establishing relationships with its companies.
Mondadori’s goal in having her cultivate relationships with American
companies was to get his company’s works published in the United States
and to get American works published in Italy by Mondadori. For the for-
mer task, the significant presence of Italians in the United States was an
important factor in motivating Arnoldo Mondadori to test out the
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Oriental traveller)
A real Indian Pilaw 613
Indian receipt for Curried Fish 614
Bengal Currie Powder, No. 1 614
Risotto à la Mayonnaise 615
Stufato (a Neapolitan receipt) 615
Broiled Eels with sage (Entrée) 616
(German receipt. Good)
A Swiss Mayonnaise 615
Tendrons de Veau 617
Poitrine de Veau Glacée 618
(Breast of Veal stewed and
glazed)
Breast of Veal simply stewed 618
Compote de Pigeons (Stewed 619
Pigeons)
Mai Trank (May Drink) 620
(German)
A Viennese Soufflé Pudding, 620
called Salzburger Nockerl
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
TRUSSING.
Page
Remarks on Trussing xxxiii

General Directions for Trussing xxxiii
To truss a Turkey, Fowl, xxxiv
Pheasant, or Partridge, for
roasting
To truss Fish xxxv
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
CARVING.
Page
Remarks on Carving xxxvii

No. 1. Cod’s head and xxxviii
shoulder (and Cod fish
generally)
No. 2. A Turbot xxxviii
No. 2a. Soles xxxviii
No. 3. Salmon xxxviii
No. 4. Saddle of Mutton xxxviii
No. 5. A Haunch of Venison (or xxxix
Mutton)
No. 6. Sirloin or Rump of Beef xxxix
No. 6a. Ribs of Beef xxxix
No. 6b. A round of Beef xxxix
No. 6c. A brisket of Beef xl
No. 7. Leg of Mutton xl
No. 8. Quarter of Lamb xl
No. 9. Shoulder of Mutton or xl
Lamb
No. 10. A Sucking Pig xl
No. 10a. A fillet of Veal xli
No. 10b. A loin of Veal xli
No. 11. A breast of Veal xli
No. 12. A tongue xli
No. 13. A calf’s head xli
No. 14. A ham xlii
No. 15. A pheasant xlii
No. 16. A boiled fowl xliii
No. 17. A roast fowl xliv
No. 18. A partridge xliv
No. 19. A woodcock xlv
No. 20. A pigeon xlv
No. 21. A snipe xlv
No. 22. A goose xlv
Ducks xlvi
No. 23. A wild duck xlvi
No. 24. A turkey xlvi
No. 25. A hare xlvii
No. 26. A fricandeau of veal xlvii
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS.
TRUSSING.
Trussing Needles.
Common and untrained cooks are often deplorably ignorant of this

branch of their business, a knowledge of which is, nevertheless,
quite as essential to them as is that of boiling or roasting; for without
it they cannot, by any possibility, serve up dinners of decently
creditable appearance. We give such brief general directions for it as
our space will permit, and as our own observations enable us to
supply; but it has been truly said, by a great authority in these
matters, that trussing cannot be “taught by words;” we would,
therefore, recommend, that instead of relying on any written
instructions, persons who really desire thoroughly to understand the
subject, and to make themselves acquainted with the mode of
entirely preparing all varieties of game and poultry more especially
for table, in the very best manner, should apply for some practical
lessons to a first-rate poulterer; or, if this cannot be done, that they
should endeavour to obtain from some well experienced and skilful
cook the instruction which they need.
GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR TRUSSING.
Before a bird is trussed, the skin must be entirely freed from any
down which may be on it, and from all the stubble-ends of the
feathers;[3] the hair also must be singed from it with lighted writing
paper, care being taken not to smoke nor blacken it in the operation.
Directions for cleansing the insides of birds after they are drawn, are
given in the receipts for dressing them, Chapters XIV. and XV.
Turkeys, geese, ducks, wild or tame, fowls, and pigeons, should all
have the necks taken off close to the bodies, but not the skin of the
necks, which should be left sufficiently long to turn down upon the
backs for a couple of inches or more, where it must be secured,
either with a needle and coarse soft cotton, or by the pinions of the
birds when trussed.
3. This should be particularly attended to.
For boiling, all poultry or other birds must
have the feet drawn off at the first joint of
the leg, or as shown in the engraving. (In
the latter case, the sinews of the joint must
be slightly cut, when the bone may be
easily turned back as here.) The skin must
then be loosened with the finger entirely from the legs, which must
be pushed back into the body, and the small ends tucked quite under
the apron, so as to be entirely out of sight.
The wings of chickens, fowls, turkeys,
and pigeons, are left on entire, whether for
roasting or boiling. From geese, ducks,
pheasants, partridges, black game, moor-
fowl, woodcocks, snipes, wild-fowl of all
kinds, and all small birds, the first two joints
are taken off, leaving but one joint on, thus:
—
The feet are left on ducks, and those of tame ones are trussed as
will be seen at page 278, and upon roast fowls, pheasants, black
and moor-game, pigeons, woodcocks, and snipes. The thick coarse
skin of the legs of these must be stripped, or rubbed off with a hard
cloth after they have been held in boiling water, or over a clear fire
for a few minutes. The sharp talons must be pulled out, and the nails
clipped. The toes of the pigeons for roasting should be cut off.
Geese, sucking-pigs, hares, and rabbits have the feet taken off at
the first joint.
The livers and gizzards are served in the wings of roast turkeys
and fowls only.
The heads are still commonly left on pheasants, partridges, and
black game and moor-game; but the fashion is declining. Of this we
shall speak more particularly in the ensuing chapter.
Poultry and birds in general, except perhaps quite the larger kinds,
are more easily trussed into plump handsome form with twine and
needles proper to the purpose (for which see page 1), than with
skewers. The manner in which the legs and wings are confined is
much the same for all; the principal difference being in the
arrangement of the former for boiling, which has already been
explained.
There is a present mode of trussing very large fowls for boiling or
stewing which to our taste is more novel than attractive. The feet are
left on, and after the skin has been loosened from them in every part,
the legs are thrust entirely into the body by means of a slight incision
made in the skin just above the first joint on the underside, the feet
then appear almost as if growing out of the sides of the breast: the
effect of this is not pleasing.
TO TRUSS A TURKEY, FOWL, PHEASANT OR PARTRIDGE, FOR
ROASTING.
First draw the skin of the neck down over the back, and secure it
from slipping up; then thread a trussing needle of convenient size,[4]
for the occasion, with packthread or small twine (the former, from
being the most flexible, is best); pass it through the pinion of the bird,
then through the thick part of the thigh, which must be brought up
close under the wing, and in a straight line quite through the body,
and through the leg and pinion on the other side; draw them close,
and bring the needle back, passing it through the thick part of the
leg, and through the second joint of the pinion, should it be left on
the bird; tie it quite tight; and then to secure the legs, pierce the
sidebone and carry the twine over the legs, then pass the needle
through the other sidebone, and tie them close down. If skewers be
used they should be driven through the pinions and the legs, and a
twine passed across the back of the bird, and caught over the points
of it, and then tied in the centre of the back: this is only needful when
the trussing is not firm.
4. These may be had, of various sizes, at any good ironmongers.
When the head is left on a bird, it may still
be trussed in the same way, and the head
brought round, as shown here, and kept in
place by a skewer passed through it, and
run through the body. When the bird is
trussed entirely with skewers, the point of
one is brought from the other side, through the pinions and the
thighs, and the head is fixed upon it. The legs are then pressed as
much as possible under the breast, between it and the side-bones,
where they are lettered a b. The partridge in the engraving is shown
with the skewers just withdrawn after being roasted.
Hares, after being filled with forcemeat, and sewn or securely
fastened up with skewers, are brought into proper roasting form by
having the head fixed between the shoulders, and either fastened to
the back by means of a long skewer, run through the head quite into
it, or by passing one through the upper part of the shoulders and the
neck together, which will keep it equally well in place, though less
thrown back. The fore-legs are then laid straight along the sides of
the hare, and a skewer is thrust through them both and the body at
the same time; the sinews are just cut through under the hind-legs,
and they are brought forward as much as possible, and skewered in
the same manner as the others. A string is then thrown across,
under the hare and over the points of both skewers, being crossed
before it is passed over the second, and then tied above the back.
The ears of a hare are left on; those of a rabbit, which is trussed in
the same way, are taken off.
Joints of meat require but little arrangement, either for the
spit or for boiling. A fillet of veal must have the flap, or part to
which the fat adheres, drawn closely round the outside, and
be skewered or bound firmly into good shape: this will apply
equally to a round of beef. The skin or flank of loins of meat
must be wrapped over the ends of the bones, and skewered
on the underside. The cook should be particularly careful to
separate the joints when it has not been done by the
butcher, and necks of veal or mutton also, or much trouble
will often arise to the carver.
Past
e To flatten and bring cutlets into
Brus uniform shape, a bat of this form is
h. used: and to egg or to cover them
with clarified butter when they are to
be crumbed, a paste-brush should Cutlet Bat.
be at hand. Indeed, these and many other
small means and appliances, ought to be
provided for every cook who is expected to perform her duty in a
regular and proper manner, for they save much time and trouble, and
their first expense is very slight; yet many kitchens are almost
entirely without them.
TO TRUSS FISH.
Salmon, salmon-peel, pike, and some few other large fish, are
occasionally trussed in the form of an S by passing a string through
the head, and tying it securely, then through the centre of the body,
and next round the tail, which should be turned the reverse way of
the head, and the whole should then be drawn closely together and
well fastened. Whitings and other fish of small size are trussed with
the tails merely skewered into their mouths. Obs.—It is
indispensable for cooks to know how to carve neatly for pies,
puddings, fricassees, and curries, at the least, hares, rabbits, fowls,
and other birds. For those who are quite without experience in this
branch of their business, the directions and the illustrations in the
next chapter for carving a fowl into joints, will be found useful; and
probably many of the other instructions also.
CARVING.
Fish Carvers.
Whether the passing fashion of the day exact it of her or not, a

gentlewoman should always, for her own sake, be able to carve well
and easily, the dishes which are placed before her, that she may be
competent to do the honours of a table at any time with propriety and
self-possession.[5] To gentlemen, and especially to those who mix
much in society, some knowledge of this art, and a certain degree of
skill in the exercise of it, are indispensable, if they would avoid the
chance of appearing often to great disadvantage themselves, and of
causing dissatisfaction and annoyance to others; for the uncouth
operations of bad carvers occasion almost as much discomfort to
those who witness, as they do generally of awkwardness and
embarrassment to those who exhibit them.
5. As this can only be accomplished by practice, young persons should be early
accustomed to carve at home, where the failure of their first attempts will
cause them much less embarrassment than they would in another sphere,
and at a later period of life.
The precise mode of carving various dishes must of course

depend on many contingencies. For a plain family-dinner, or where
strict economy is an imperative consideration, it must sometimes, of
necessity, differ from that which is laid down here. We have confined
our instructions to the fashion usually adopted in the world.
Carving knives and forks are to be had of many forms and sizes,
and adapted to different purposes: the former should always have a
very keen edge, and the latter two prongs only.
No. 1. COD’S HEAD AND SHOULDERS (AND COD FISH
GENERALLY.)
The thick part of the back of this, as of all large fish—salmon

excepted—is the firmest and finest eating. It should be carved
across, rather thick, and, as much as possible, in unbroken slices,
from a to b. The sound, which is considered a delicacy, lies
underneath, and lines the back-bone: it must be reached with a
spoon in the direction c. The middle of the fish, when served to a
family party, may be carved in the same manner, or in any other
which convenience and economy may dictate.
No. 2. A TURBOT.
In carving this most excellent fish, the rich gelatinous skin attached
to it, and a portion of the thick part of the fins, should be served with
every slice. If the point of the fish-knife be drawn down the centre of
the back through to the bone, in the lines a b c, and from thence to d
d d, the flesh may easily be raised upon the blade in handsome
portions,. The thickest parts of all flat fish are the best. A brill and a
John Dory are served exactly like a turbot.
SOLES.
The more elegant mode of serving these, and the usual one at
good tables, is to raise the flesh from the bones as from a turbot,
which is easily done when the fish are large; but when they are too
small well to admit of it, they must be divided across quite through
the bone: the shoulders, and thick part of the body, are the superior
portions.
No. 3. SALMON.
It is customary to serve a slice of the thick part of the back of this

fish, which is marked from a to b, with one of the thinner and richer
portions of it, shown by the line from c to d. It should be carved quite
straight across, and the fine flakes of the flesh should be preserved
as entire as possible. Salmon-peel, pike, haddocks, large whitings,
and all fish which are served curled round, and with the backs
uppermost, are carved in the same manner; the flesh is separated
from the bone in the centre of the back, and taken off, on the outer
side first, in convenient portions for serving. The flesh of mackerel is
best raised from the bones by passing the fish-slice from the tail to
the head: it may then be divided in two.
No. 4. SADDLE OF MUTTON.
The manner of trussing this joint varies almost from season to

season, the mode which is considered in good taste one year being
obsolete the next, in families where passing fashions are closely
observed. It seems really immaterial whether it be served as shown
in the engraving; or whether two or three joints of the tail be left on
and surrounded with a paper frill. This joint is now trussed for
roasting in the manner shown in the engraving; and when it is dished
a silver skewer replaces the one marked e. It is likewise often still
served in good families with only two or three joints of the tail left on.
The most usual mode of carving it is in thin slices cut quite along the
bone, on either side, in the line a to b; but it is sometimes sliced
obliquely from c to d: this last fashion is rather gaining ground. The
thick end of the joint must then, of course, be to the left of the carver.
A saddle of pork or of lamb is carved exactly in the same manner.
No. 5. A HAUNCH OF VENISON (OR MUTTON.)
An incision must first be made entirely across the knuckle end of

this joint, quite down to the bone, in the line a b, to let the gravy
escape; it must then be carved in thin slices taken as deep as they
can be, the whole length of the haunch, from c to d. A portion of the
fat should invariably be served with the venison.

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Italian Womens Experiences With American Consumer Culture 1945 1975 The Italian Mrs Consumer Jessica L Harris Full Chapter

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Italian Women's Experiences with

American Consumer Culture,

More information about this series at

Italian and Italian American Studies

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: colaimages / Alamy Stock Photo

Mondadori in Milan. Everyone at Bocconi University in Milan, where I

of information, archival suggestions, and support. While finishing the

1 Introduction: Italy and the Arrival of Mrs. Consumer 1

2 How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and

3 How to Shop and Dress like Mrs. Consumer: Rebuilding

4 How to Shop, Store, and Cook Food like

5 How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American

Part III  163

6 The Catholic and Communist Mrs. Consumer165

7 Were They Really Mrs. Consumers?191

Fig. 3.1 La Rinascente, Milano Piazza del Duomo, Before Bombing in

Fig. 4.3 Ignis “La tecnica … i vantaggi” Advertisement. (Source: La

Introduction: Italy and the Arrival

On December 30, 1963, RAI—Italy’s national public broadcasting com-

© The Author(s) 2020 1

consumer society in the postwar period. These economic factors com-

ideals to Italy also contributed to the development of a consumer-oriented

Consumerism and Women in the United States

societies. The Modern Girl spread throughout American society as her

accompanied them. Furthermore, new styles in dress and beauty which

After the Second World War

book highlights the concerted efforts of Italian entrepreneurs Arnoldo

Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe,

consumer culture in Italian women’s lives after the “miracle,” especially in

Structure of the Book and Chapter Outline

Chapter 5, “How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American Beauty

consumer culture did enact significant changes in these women’s everyday

Books, Chapters, Articles

Kuisel, Richard. 1993. Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization.

How to Read like Mrs. Consumer:

On a foggy autumn day in 1960, nine smiling, well-dressed Italian corre-

© The Author(s) 2020 27

outbreak of war in 1939 forced Grazia’s suspension until 1946 when it

his actions, female readers of Mondadori publications, especially that of

The History of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

Mondadori’s Strategy: The Marshall Plan

Therefore, the European Recovery Program, more commonly known as

We are planning now an enormous project for re-edification of our plants in

Despite the termination of Marshall Plan funding, the Mondadori

Mondadori’s Strategy: Andiamo in America!28

agencies, acquire American machines, and to sign agreements allowing for

Remarks on Trussing xxxiii

Remarks on Carving xxxvii

Common and untrained cooks are often deplorably ignorant of this

Whether the passing fashion of the day exact it of her or not, a

The precise mode of carving various dishes must of course

The thick part of the back of this, as of all large fish—salmon

It is customary to serve a slice of the thick part of the back of this

The manner of trussing this joint varies almost from season to

An incision must first be made entirely across the knuckle end of

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1 Introduction: Italy and the Arrival of Mrs. Consumer 1

2 How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and

3 How to Shop and Dress like Mrs. Consumer: Rebuilding

4 How to Shop, Store, and Cook Food like

5 How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American

Part III 163

6 The Catholic and Communist Mrs. Consumer165

7 Were They Really Mrs. Consumers?191