There was a disconcerting article in the news yesterday. Apparently a 13 year old Italian girl had been selling nude photos of herself to her classmates. She had even managed to ‘work’ with others who kindly took the photos.

Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
Could this type of behaviour have anything to do with the nightly topless, or just about topless females that adorn the early evening ‘Studio Aperto’ ‘news’ programme? Noooo, surely not. I mean ‘Studio Aperto’ is not aimed at a younger audience, now is it?. Nah. There is no way an impressionable young girl could have got the impression that showing off your body is a jolly nice thing to do and that she might just make you a few bob or two from it, now is there? No way. That would be impossible. It could not be the fact that a generation of Italian kids have grown up with this kind of ‘mild porn’ public TV now, now could it? No, perish the thought. You would have expected that the head of the Roman Catholic church would have said something about all this before, wouldn’t you? After all the aforesaid church boss does actually live in this country, now doesn’t he?
I wonder just how the parents of the ‘young innocent’ felt when they discovered their offspring’s chosen career. I am not that sure I would think that it is all that good for my daughter or son to be acting like this. Or am I just being too puritan? I have to say that this kind of thing is not all that common here, at least it does not make the news, anyway. When I read the story I immediately thought of ‘Studio Aperto’, not to mention the host of other Italian TV programmes that use scantily clad females to keep viewer numbers up. Maybe I just came to too hasty a conclusion. Maybe. The thought of kids of that age getting up to such tricks – not so much the taking of the photos, but the selling of them, makes me a little sad and worried. Am I too old? Possibly.