Gender games

IT is 8:30pm, and all eyes turn to Italy’s most popular satirical news programme, Striscia la Notizia (Strip the News).

Two middle-aged men stand under a strobe-light, one of them holding a belt from which dangles a vaguely phallic string of garlic.

A woman slides across the floor on her stomach, wearing a costume with a thong bottom and a deep-V neckline. As she stands up, one of the men dangles the garlic in front of her open mouth. She takes it in her hands and rubs it across the side of her face.