Men

All of my male Italian friends are going to read this and come straight to me to give me a piece of their minds. Oh well...these are observations, not facts.

So Italian men, right? Two words that are famously put together to synonimize tall, dark and handsome, right? When people ask me why I picked to learn Italian and why I wanted to spend two years of my life in Italy they usually just assume it's because of the Italian men. Because any American girl would be all over that, amIright?

Well no, turns out I'm extremely wrong.

They (let me get this straight--it's not just ITALIAN men, it's ALL of them) whistle and cat call and make kissing noises as you pass. The older men stare you up and down shamelessly and relentlessly. They invite you to "coffee" and to "come up to see their apartment real fast". They whisper under their breath that you're the most beautiful THING they've ever seen, then as soon as you pass them they call you a dirty whore.

And this is on the daily.

The advice given to me was to ignore it because there's nothing I can do. Which there really isn't, but it's still really sucky advice. It's pretty clear that the way this society thinks of women is about 30 years behind the U.S. One day I got to a breaking point and flipped off a group of men making kissing noises at me as I was passing on my way to class.          And then all hell broke loose.           They jumped up from where they were sitting and shouted the nastiest things I've ever heard someone call me in my life. Everyone started staring. Then this really sweet old man came over and started yelling at them for not respecting women and how their mothers should have taught them that. So clearly all men in Italy are not like this. Shout out to my 3 dude roommates for keeping it real. Real respectful that is! And on that extremely dorky note, I will leave you all to the rests of your day. :)