Today—without wine, mind you—we made a giant wall.
I’ve got a strong, unconscious, ‘must prove myself as strong as the men’ feminism whenever there is work to be done, especially when the men try to give me easier work or expect less of me. Here is not the first time. In India, for example, we had to build a wall, too (it was ironically in the exact same structure as we built today with large stones that we collected and cement we made for in between). At the time for whatever reason, I felt my feminine strength being threatened, so somehow I elbowed my way into the forefront of every single job within the week: mixing the cement by hand, carrying buckets of it back and forth, collecting rocks, and the skilled labor of actually constructing the wall. By the end, the local men had taken to calling me “masala girl” (cement girl) because of my impressive strength and energy.
This time, when I asked Angelo what I could do to help, he jabbingly replied,
“You said you were stronger than you look, didn’t you? How about shoveling the cement into buckets and handing it to us on the wall? You don’t have to fill them all the way—you won’t be able to carry them.”
Italy has a reputation for machismo. In fact, my first weekend in Rome I went to the "Protest of the Women", a national protest in cities across Italy. The goal: to say "enough!" to the machismo in Italy that President Berlusconi perpetuates with his frequent affairs with numerous women.
So naturally after Angelo's unbeknown-to-him threat to my equality, I proceeded to fill the buckets to the top with cement and lift them above my head to hand them to the men.
“This American girl impresses me more everyday!”
“What?—do you lift weights daily at home?”
“Don’t leave this farm; we’ve got more walls to build!” is the summation of numerous remarks. When I mentioned to them that I had been christened “masala girl” in India, they baptized me “biccio girl” here.
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