Giorgia Meloni, an unlikely contender to become Italy’s first female prime minister, assumed office on October 22, 2022, with ringlet curls and a bold pink lip. Far-right counterparts, like the former Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, took to X to congratulate Meloni not long after the election victory. With her distinctive and gentle feminine aesthetic, no one would assume that Meloni would be allied with someone who faced accusations of being a Holocaust denier after comments made at a conference in 2018. Yet in 1996, Meloni herself was quoted on French television claiming that “Mussolini was a good politician.” She hides her controversial fascist roots now that she is an established politician, using her pastel blouses, dramatic eye makeup, and bold jewelry as tools to weaponize her feminine appearance to seem more progressive in her politics.
Despite breaking a major glass ceiling for women in Italian politics, a fact which Meloni herself has addressed before the Italian Parliament, she cannot be considered a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, she employs feminist rhetoric and appeals to certain left-wing social causes to serve her broader far-right populist political agenda, a tactic that has been coined by sociologist Sara Farris as “femonationalism.” This framework explains why Meloni encourages policies that increase work-life balance for Italian mothers while simultaneously supporting racist immigration policies that prevent African migrants from entering Italy. She aims to help Italian women balance family obligations and other pursuits while simultaneously making it more difficult for immigrant women to do the same.
The concept of femonationalism also helps explain why Meloni takes issue with sexual assault only when perpetrated by men of color. For example, Meloni’s long-term partner, journalist Andrea Giambruno, caused controversy when he claimed that women should “avoid getting drunk and losing consciousness” to prevent sexual assault and rape. Meloni claimed that his words were misinterpreted and that she should not be held accountable for “what a journalist says while doing his job.” Yet Meloni portrays immigrant men as the main perpetrators of sexual violence against women, using this narrative as justification for her xenophobic policy platform. During her election campaign, to justify and solidify her identity as a candidate who will restore law and order to Italian society, Meloni posted a graphic video of a Ukrainian woman being sexually assaulted by a man she claimed was an “asylum seeker.” From Meloni’s flawed perspective, if her proposed policies are not enacted, foreign men will have children with Italian women while foreign women will simultaneously “Islamize Europe,” outpacing Italian women in terms of fertility.
Meloni’s diluted version of feminism is ultimately a vision of equity that only includes women of specific social identities, but she poses as a woman of the people by employing traditional aesthetics of feminine appearance with a hint of middle-class professionalism. Preaching nationalist messages to voters in this demure package was key to her rise to power, though she abandoned her wide array of pinks and greens in favor of dark Armani pantsuits during the early days of her administration. Still, she attempts to present a certain down-to-earth and maternal quality to distract from her racist rhetoric and praise for Mussolini. At the 2023 NATO Summit, Meloni ended a press conference early because “her high heels were killing her.” After all, who would think that the woman complaining about her shoes could cause the sort of large-scale suffering associated with a fascist regime?
Meloni has garnered some praise from Italian feminists due to her approachable persona. Marina Terragni of RadFem Italia went as far as to credit Meloni with eliminating the “taboo” surrounding women in Italian politics, as the Democratic Party also ushered in a new female leader, Elly Schlein, not long after Meloni’s ascent. At the same time, critics have highlighted major contradictions between the administration’s rhetoric and its core beliefs. Gilda Sportiello, a Parliament member for the left-wing Five Star Movement, pointed out that Meloni’s equal opportunity minister Eugenia Roccella—one of the few women in Meloni’s cabinet—declared in a TV interview that “abortion is not a right.”
So far, Meloni’s grasp on power is strong, continuing to rise both domestically and internationally. As Meloni rejects gender quotas in politics and business and refuses to use the Italian feminine article “la” in her title, she seems to progressively separate herself from her sex. The paradox persists as she steps out in a glittering pantsuit to address the nation from her podium, leaving one to wonder if she will decimate the path for other women to follow in her wake.