Choosing the right words and finding them where there are none, there in the garden of symbols where every day we find divisive expressions, it is important that everyone feels represented by words that represent reality. And language plays a fundamental role in this because only in this way can we tackle topics that are initially too large and unknown, making them concrete and approachable.
He says it Annie Mazzola, Coca-Cola ambassador on the project in the Modena and Prato stages, which, interviewed by director of Cosmopolitan Lavinia Farnese gives a very simple example. «I am a heterosexual woman, I am not part of any minority and yet I realize how fundamental the right language is in the narrative of new families because I live together with my partner and his two children, Riccardo and Olivia. Every day I take Riccardo to nursery, the other parents mistake me for the babysitter because they know her mother better, I have the delegation to take care of picking him up. Yet, to go and watch her performance, the teachers hadn’t thought that three of us wanted to come as a family: Riccardo’s parents and me, his father’s partner. Why does a family have to have only two figures? We wanted to come as a group of three, all together and initially it wasn’t considered a possibility. The teachers immediately realized their “bias”, the preconception according to which the figures who educate in the family are only mothers and fathers, while we are not even allowed to have a name other than “stepmother”. If you think about it, there is no different word to indicate a figure other than the mother who takes care of a child and who is part of the same family sphere. Words are important, and with ever new familiar social structures it is important that the lexicon keeps up with the possibilities that reality offers.”
Word then to Alberto Bignardi From Villanova, president of Rainbow Families from Modena, who together with her partner is deciding to embark on the path to becoming parents. «We must not speak of a “rented womb”, because it presupposes an unethical situation, and a starting state which greatly degrades the role of the woman in a path which is instead also chosen by the woman herself who decides to carry children in her womb to who can’t have it. This is why it is important to talk about “surrogate motherhood”, “ethical gestation for others (or ethical GPA)”, these are the expressions that must be used, let’s say things in the correct way, only in this way can we provide correct information”.
See you in Prato on June 19th: appointment here
➡️ 19 JUNE – PRATO with Famiglie Arcobaleno and Annie Mazzola, Radio Presenter and Ambassador of the project, moderated by Lavinia Farnese, Director of Cosmopolitan Italia
