Drawing as a Device to Deconstruct Gender Stereotypes: The Case of the Southern Italian Woman

Abstract

My project is a combination of artistic and scholarly research about the Southern Italian woman, who are often referred to by the pejorative term terrona. By analyzing films that include the terrona stereotype, I investigate how she has been represented as aggressive, sexualized, and maternal. Through my drawings, I challenge the terrona’s stereotype by recontextualizing the terrona image in dialogue with the Italian philosophy of sexual difference and ecofeminism. My drawings reconfigure the terrona’s stereotypical feminine traits into an agential, fulfilled woman connected to the Mediterranean environment. In my drawings, I fantasize how the reclaimed relationship to the Mediterranean environment potentially transforms the terrona representation from a marginalized woman into an empowered one. In this imaginative arts-based speculative narrative, the stereotypical terrona’s aggressiveness becomes a green energy that she uses to produce sustainable agricultural activities. The terrona’s sexualized body becomes a power that she holds to feel sensorial pleasure by connecting to her environment. Her stereotypical maternal attitude is transformed into her capability to bring prosperity to the ecosystem where she lives.