"Plastic Mannequins": Femininity, Language, and Visual Resistance in Italy (1945–1975)

This paper examines the construction of femininity as a visual, social, and disciplinary device in postwar Italy, tracing its mechanisms across three interconnected fields: women's labour, print media, and feminist artistic practice. Drawing on testimonies published in Noi Donne (1971), the fashion magazine Annabella (1945–1965), and the works of feminist artists Marcella Campagnano, Suzanne Santoro, Nicole Gravier, and Cloti Ricciardi, the paper argues that femininity in this period functioned not as a natural identity but as a culturally constructed performance: imposed through aesthetic discipline, visual erasure, and linguistic normativity. Particular attention is given to Santoro's Towards New Expression (1974) and Ricciardi's Alfabeta (1975) as practices of critical deconstruction operating on the body and on language respectively. The paper concludes by situating these practices within a broader feminist theoretical framework, drawing on Carla Lonzi's radical rejection of assimilation into dominant cultural systems.