The Collective Illusion of Italian Summer
Do Italians really live better? Is everyone in on the lie? Does it matter?
There’s no summer like Italian summer.
L’estate Italiana.
The phrase alone elicits images of azure waters, stony beaches, white bikinis, and bronzed skin. L’estate italiana is peak dolce vita, carefree living, plates of spaghetti with clams, and rivers of wine served casually aboard boats and seaside trattorias.
Never mind the unclothed table and mismatched flatware. Look at the view!
Italian summer is a state of mind.
Collectively defined, collectively strived for and collectively achieved.
Like a World Cup trophy, won by the team, but celebrated nationwide, l’estate italiana is a point of pride, one of few cultural phenomena the entire country shares.
Starting in June, the first magazine covers feature celebrities lounging aboard mega yachts and frolicking beachside. July and August are a blur of paparazzi images, each scene more enviable than the next.
These are not average Italians, but they are partaking in shared rituals, albeit in the glossiest five-star version.
One of the first things I noticed when I moved here in 2001, is the extent to which Italians embrace ritual. The’s a sense of comfort, of rootedness in repeated actions.
Rituals performed in community form the framework of our sense of reality.
We associate with others and see ourselves reflected within the collective. We may not have it all, but someone else, with whom we identify, fills in the gaps.
When I arrived in Rome, fresh as a Missouri morning, I aspired to a version of Italian life I’d crafted from lyric opera, movies, and my own imagination. Escapism got me halfway here (along with a study visa and understanding parents).
I may not have found exactly what I was looking for, but I found enough. Most importantly, I found myself.
Even 20 years later, I recognize the comfort in believing the lie, embracing the illusion.
An espresso will not solve my problems.
I am fully cognizant that life in all its infinite uncertainties charges on outside the doors of my corner café, and yet when we all chose to embrace it, to believe it, to be players or participants in the grand illusion, it doesn’t matter.
During those five minutes at the bar, we can breathe.
Dinner out is another great example.
When the plates arrive, two or three on each arm of the server to a table-wide chorus of Wow, mamma mia, buonisismo! how could the meal be anything but delicious? It might even be a mediocre meal, as Italian meals go, but the tone has been set. Why ruin it with a pesky facts about bad house wine or overcooked spaghetti?
What can we learn about happiness by watching the way Italians blur the lines between aspiration, ritual, and reality?
My first actual Italian summer vacation went like this
My boyfriend Stefano had two weeks off in August, and a car to get us somewhere.
We pored over ads in the back of magazines for beachfront rental apartments in Calabria. The region was mostly undiscovered back then, and presumably more affordable. The New York Times had yet to wander into some quaint town, inexplicably communicate with locals in no shared language to report on its warmth and authenticity, and cheap fresh fish.
High-season pricing had hit even the most remote stretches of coastline, so we widened our search to include “seaside-adjacent,” and finally settled on something “a short drive” from the beach.
For part of June and all of July, visions of vacanza danced in my head.
Stefano and I would kiss passionately atop slabs of granite, glistening and sea sprayed. Our own private Acqua di Giò or Calvin Klein Escape print ad, minus the carved abs and back-to-the ground, buoyant breasts. We weren’t models, but we were desperately in love.
We would buy shrimp and Tropea red onions, cook dinner inside, and eat it outside on our two square meters of terrace. After sundown, with nothing else to do, we’d lazily make love and fall asleep with the windows open and the fan on low because too much air will make you sick.
I tore through the racks at Calzedonia, Italy’s flagship for stockings in winter and bathing suits the rest of the year. I purchased a slimming cream at the pharmacy and wrapped my thighs in mineral mud and cellophane along with half a nation of women.
These same women refuse to relinquish their breakfast brioche despite the looming prova del costume (the beach-body challenge).
Plenty of Italians worry about their weight.
Don’t get me wrong. I would never denigrate their struggle.
They will, if necessary, portion out grams of prosciutto and mozzarella for lunch, and limit wine to one glass of white. All the same, I’ve never heard men so ardently insist they like some meat on those bones.
I landed in Italy as a late-blooming twenty-two-year-old with a decade of body issues in tow. I credit the change of scenery for my own transformation. The food was healthier, sure. The portions were smaller too. But I also believed I was prettier in Rome, and that is half the battle.
When August came, my boyfriend Stefano fought with his boss and found another job doing security at a campsite. He sold his car and bought a new used motorcycle, which we rode to prettier beaches just outside of Rome when he had a day or two off.
I stayed with him in a camper for a week so we could have dinner together at the campsite pizzeria before he started the nightshift. We’d have sex and breakfast when we woke up, which was usually late afternoon.
It wasn’t ideal, and sometimes we argued, but rereading my journal entries, you’d never know I was anywhere but paradise.
I’ll never forget the joy of that first summer. I delighted in the ordinariness of mass anticipation. The ritual summoning of Italian summer. I felt the hours crawl by, and I chimed into conversations that began with, Where are you going and I can’t wait until…
I noticed it more acutely as a foreigner, an American none the less. The closest thing we have to this collective anticipation and jubilation is summer off from school. But once you hit 18 or working age, it’s over.
Italians are humans of course, and the economy isn’t great.
Headlines flash ever more regularly about the thousands of citizens who cannot afford to travel on vacation. In a nation that has grown up watching royalty at play and the wealthy evade taxation, resentment and disappointment are certainly real.
Yesterday’s magazine covers are today’s celebrity influencers.
They project unattainable, and inexplicably luxury lives. Their reels and the selfies provoke envy and inspire self-doubt, but anyone who has been to Positano without a staff knows what it’s really like drag a suitcase up and down cliffside stairs.
When you stop scrolling, the beaches belong to us again.
Soon enough, the influencers will move on to some exciting new place, detached from their destinations because they must keep moving to keep our attention.
Social media exacerbates some of our worst instincts: jealousy, insecurity, competition, and yes, a filtered version of reality. But social media is just a magnifying glass to a preexisting condition.
Human beings have always had the habit of projecting a version of the lives we strive for. We smile into the camera. We wear our Sunday best. We used to dress up to ride planes. We swipe on some lipstick to feel prettier.
A little illusion goes a long way.
Th entire Italian population is not sipping spritzes all day.
On my block, however, the mechanic, the cobbler and the antique dealer often have a beer or a glass of white wine before lunch.
When temperatures soar, and the first photos appear on phone screens, we are all at that beach. We are all dreaming. We’re all waiting for vacation together, counting the minutes to a patch of green in the countryside or a plot of sand amid the hordes.
In the meantime, we’ll stop for an ice cream and eat it in the shade. We’ll linger a little longer over espresso.
And when summer ends, no matter how we spent it, we’ll lament the end together. We’ll share pictures and stories, and we’ll sigh.
Back to work. Until next year.
"The entire Italian population is not sipping spritzes all day." welllll.... *italian hand gestures* spritz might be a sign of recession since it's an affordable treat. labubu whooo?!
I like how clearly your passion shines through here! My favorite lines: "An espresso will not solve my problems …. [but] During those five minutes at the bar, we can breathe." I think most people can identify with that! As I keep coming back to in my own posts, there are many Italian rituals that speak to me. That's another of them.
I'm not that much of a beach person. I grew up near the beaches in South Florida and spent summers as a kid in the Caribbean. I go to the seaside once or twice a summer but generally prefer my summer escapes near cool mountain lakes. But reading what you wrote made me want to grab my things and get some sand between my toes.
Grazie per il post!