TO WORK FOR NOTHING, OXYMORON AND PARADOX OF MODERN TIMES

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Before to write this article, I wondered a lot about the keyword. I confess that it was difficult because all the ideas that arouse in my mind were inevitably an oxymoron. Contradiction by contradiction I decided to give up and accepted the reality, therefore to work for nothing. Here my keyword! I could choose voluntary work but it wasn’t the same.

«Are you paid? » I have to reply to this question many times a week. I’m an author, I tried to live using not my talent but an inclination, a passion. Nevertheless, according to some people, it is strange that I get money thanks to my job. Why shouldn’t I? if I need an electrician to fix a breakdown no one could doubt that he must be paid. But in the Republic of interns, temps and handymen, to work for nothing represents a must have that is always fashionable.

At the beginning there were the apprentices that multiplied themselves at a speed of copy machine.

Using the opportunity to gain experience as an excuse, the interns spent many months Xeroxing files, creating slides in which no one was really interested and dripping coffee. Underpaid or asked to work for nothing in the name of a future glory, they are the forefathers of the dynasty of fake volunteers.

Generally, who wants to be a volunteer acts because really desires to help someone else giving time and energies. Fake volunteers hold a role that don’t like at all.

They are not moved by philanthropic spirit and who takes advantages from their services is not poor. Come on, I was an intern inside an international company and was paid 400 euros per month…I’ve never seen someone who acted the poor-mouth! Initially you truly believe in the opportunity to gain experience and are ready to give up gaining money. Unfortunately, when you have to buy something, pay the rent or the bills, you need money. Dirty, damned and very quickly.

Well, let’s go beyond and talk about professionals. Why does the client think that I should work for nothing? Why should the client benefit from my work without paying? I can do a favor, but it’s up to me. I can do a preferential price, but it’s up to me. Yes, it’s always up to me.

But in the Republic of handymen, there’s also who lies about his expertise and sells himself for few changes. And so the vicious circle begins. I read around the web a statement that clearly summarizes this concept: If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional wait until you hire an amateur.

In any case I won’t be able to be consoled until someone will ask me if I’m paid for my job. It’s the oxymoron of our times. We should never discuss about the right to be remunerated, but in a paradoxical way, nowadays we are surprised when it happens. My personal I have a dream is that one day, when I’ll talk about my profession and about my long-cherished dream to work in the performing arts field, nobody asks me which is my job. The real one.

CELEBRITY: THE OBSESSIVE FAME RESEARCH

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Vanity, narcissism, attention-seeking behavior. Vices? Maybe. Weaknesses? Probably. The desire to stand out is innate. Often also shy people use their silence to catch the attention of the rest of the world. But the longing to be noticed can go beyond and become a spasmodic celebrity research.

In the era in which everybody have the opportunity to create their own showcase and make it bright and sparkling like an everlasting Christmas, there’s the space for the prophetic statement by Andy Warhol «in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes». Andy’s future is our present or even our past. And minutes, unfortunately, are more than fifteen. Internet, social networks and television too are used by celebrity, an abstract but powerful entity, to seek its victims.

Getting recognized on the street, being called VIPs, being stars. These aims are empty but are filled up by thirst for money and success, a sort of success that many times doesn’t exist or is so evanescent to vanish completely.

Starving to death was and is a problem for many people but nowadays people die also because a lack of fame. What could you accept to do just to taste the public acclaim? A flavor that is sweet at the beginning but can become bitter. A not well-run fame easily brings towards moral and material failure, from hero to zero.

Could you deny your dignity to be considered famous? I apologize for the examples I’m going to use, they’re effective. Let’s think about Gemma from Uomini & Donne, a seventy-year lady that built her character based on public humiliation, tears and insults. Let’s think about those VIPs that no one remember, those ones that don’t accept their status and haven’t the nerve to admit they’ve never been celebrities. Maybe someone has moments of glory, but time passes and is ferocious. And so, they decide to attend TV shows like Celebrity Survivors and fight for a cup of rice, the most primitive nature arises. Little lifeless stars that don’t shine on its own and need spotlights to be sparkling.

Also common people die because a lack of fame. Those people that to get a framing on TV are ready to argue for a seat close to the video camera, those ones that create an Instagram profile and add official close to the name (who wants to steal your identity?), those ones that invent fake news, those ones afflicted with mythomania. Celebrity Olympus is craved by many people but is just for few. Beautiful, shining and immortal fame is exclusive. Then there’s the rest, the weak notoriety that makes you transparent and in the end doesn’t leave either a vague recollection of you.

WOMEN SPELL…DISTRACTION!

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First of all, I want to say that:

  1. This post is argumentative

  2. I’m not a crazed feminist

This article was born while I was looking for an apartment for sale. I opened the door of an estate agency sure that the owner was a woman that I know. I bumped into a nipper with chewed nails and I asked him to meet his supervisor. He smiled and said: Miss, maybe you made a mistake. No women here because the managers don’t want to hire them.

Read More…

Gym and Fitness: 5 kinds of people you will inevitably meet

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The gym is the place for bringing up great expectations, good intentions and unkept promises.

Be honest, it’s easy to take out a membership! Some people buy expensive yearly subscriptions to force themselves to go there regularly. Unfortunately, many times the aim is losing weight but in the end only the wallet looks slimmer. In the meantime, there are also people who live at the gym, you meet them from Monday to Sunday and, who knows, maybe they sleep between the bike and the treadmill.

The fauna at the gym is varied, but if we want to be scientific and dare to do a classification, it is possible to identify 5 categories:

The dreamers:

The dreamers are those ones that are used to call workout activities as bench fit, aqua gym and stretching. So, I think that is fair to add to Olympic sports also fork lifting, vaulting on the bed and sloth on the couch.

The gossipers:

The gossipers go to the gym to train just a muscle: the tongue. They don’t sweat, spend time chatting and badmouthing. They know everything about all members of the club and inexplicably are always close to you. Don’t care about their questions, you risk to be…on the front page!

The seducers:

The seducers are always around the sexiest trainers. They generally attend zumba or pilates class and wear slinky leggings that draw attention to the unavoidable G-string. Of course, it peeps out at each squat. Crazed.

The know-it-all:

Also if you don’t know him, are lost in your thoughts and don’t care about the rest of the world, the know-it-all comes close to you and lists all the mistakes you are doing during the training. His ego is limitless, and so he seizes the opportunity to show off his culture about gym and workout. Try to play dead, it’s the only way to make him silent.

The lady-killer:

He considers himself the playboy of the gym and wearing a snug vest is sure to look as a Greek God. The lady-killer is very muscular, forever bronzed and foul-smelling because of a mix of perfume and sweat. According to him, the gym is a marriage agency. Between a deltoid and a pectoral tries to talk endlessly to you and, using the excuse to teach you how to do an exercise, puts his hand on your butt. There’s only one repellent: the Zumba class.

Pajamas and nightgown: 3 situations for (proudly) showing them off

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I was six or maybe seven years old and once I decided to go to school wearing my pajamas. My mother and her rampant rationality stopped my creativity and so the career as a trendsetter was drastically nipped in the bud.

But, also if time passed, something changed. Before, going around in pajamas was considered completely insane, now it’s the same but it’s a madness validated by fashion rules. Since the autumn, international celebrities are showing off some outfits composed by nightgowns and sophisticated sleepwears matched with stylish high-heeled shoes. As always, there’s who can and who cannot. Probably, if I were dressed with my oversize t-shirt with Hello Kitty and polka-dot trousers around the city, I would be charged with insulting a good dress sense but if you are an influencer who wears a very expensive PJs and has tons of followers on Instagram, in that case everything is allowed. Although fashion system totally legitimized the daily role of pyjamas, according to me there are only three reasons to put it on to not stay at home:

EMERGENCY:

It’s night, you hear the fire alarm and, as you learnt, just take away the essential and look for an exit. Don’t care if you are in Helsinki, it’s snowy and you wear multicolor pajamas and a pair thongs. Yes, it really happened and I called it survival instinct. In this case, putting on a nightgown is absolutely permissible.

DELAY:

It is the most important day in your professional life and everybody at the office are waiting for your speech in front of the super boss. But that morning your alarm decides to stab you in the back in a perfect Julius Cesar style and therefore you remain in the bed completely asleep. When finally you open your eyes, you realize that it’s late, it’s terribly late. You look at yourself in the mirror and even though compared to you a Tibetan macaque looks better, you put into practice the only idea you had to save the situation: you simply wear a coat and go out in pyjamas. Dialectic will be your strength and in case of thorny questions you could be proud to have copied the ultimate look by Chiara Ferragni.

ROMANTIC SETBACK:

He decided to break up, the horoscope forecasted a year that increases your desire to live in a retreat and your best friend is Nutella. The romantic setback strictly connected you and your PJs that in the meanwhile became your partner in crime. Putting on something nice and going out with your friends is not in your plans, but you should take into consideration the opportunity to buy at least the bread and avoid to eat the one you have at home, it’s hard like a stone! Only for the first three days in which you are in a metaphoric mourning, you are allowed to be in touch with the rest of the world showing off a nightgown. If you can convince other people to be trendy, you can convince yourself that actually your ex-boyfriend wasn’t nothing special!

Everybody sing Sanremo: The Festival lights up the city of flowers

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Everybody sing Sanremo, everybody talk about Sanremo. We can’t deny that the event of the week is Sanremo Music Festival.

Every year February brings the music to the so-called city of flowers causing polemics, transforming each of us into skilled musicians or into esthetes ready to judge the outfits of the protagonists. Sanremo is democratic because is a topic that interests many people both who like it and who don’t. Everybody want to be informed about the Festival but then no one watches it on TV (or at least, they say so!), but five days a year, everything in Italy concerns Sanremo.

The most beautiful experience in my career as a journalist is linked to this wonderful ritual that is loved and hated. Living the Festival in the press room and in those holy locations like Teatro Ariston is exciting, stressful, amazing and mainly slimming. Rhythm of these days is a no-stop and is both a benefit for the silhouette and a mess for a nervous system.

The final is scheduled on Saturday 11th but also the first days gave us adrenaline and panic. Here what happened:

BOMB THREAT

What happens if while you are in the press room and are working someone asks you to escape and be fast as Bolt at the Olympics? Panic! Bomb threat. And so, you understand that this edition of the Festival will be…explosive!

TUESDAY NIGHT FEVER

Maria De Filippi is the best of this year. Carlo Conti decided to not have the classic assistants (or co-presenters to be politically correct) but wanted a queen at his side. In the end, thanks to both, Maria & Carlo continue the tradition to have the couple blonde & brunette on the stage. Just a glitch: on Tuesday Maria was sick. She didn’t attend the press conference and put her hope in the hands of paracetamol. God bless fever reducer!

OOOOOPS

During the opening of the Festival there were few blunders! And I’m not talking about Maria’s half-fall due to the high-heeled shoes, but also and mainly about the crime against elegance. The female singers, except Fiorella Mannoia, moved up the Carnival and showed off some outfits that made us to regret the ‘80s. Girls, remember: you are not Lady Gaga!

 

 

LINKEDIN: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL NETWORK

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Once upon a time there was a social network created to help people in building a professional network.

Imagine a big hall where tons of people introduce themselves and exchange business cards. A place where everybody have the opportunity to create synergies talking about their skills, education and job experiences. This web service was called LinkedIn.

Let it be clear that this far far away kingdom still exists, but as in each fable, it is threatened by something (or someone) and waits for a brave knight that can make it great again. Maybe the LinkedIn’s mission is not so easy! In fact, during the years, a social network mainly dedicated to the job market took a turn for the worst and became a hybrid platform that many people consider like Facebook or, even worse, like an online dating website.

It’s embarrassing, come on. Before the problem was being harassed at work by the boss or colleagues, now it seems completely legitimized in a sort of 2.0 edition.

Therefore, if in the past the advances arose only from known people, thanks to LinkedIn it’s possible to get unpleasant attentions also from random people ready to contact you without any professional aim. You can recognize them: they don’t do any job barely related to your profession, their profile is half-done and they generally start the conversation saying “Where r u from?”. No comment about the battered orthography and grammar. The rule number 1 is to not accept this kind of requests. Unless you are investor in Meetic, the online approaching is a skill that you don’t need on your CV!

LinkedIn goes beyond, also the escorts use it. Silence. Confusion. Perplexity. Someone could say that in the end also the escorts are professionals. Depression. Some of them write to be “models”. Unfortunately the services offered are not only photographic!

This digital jungle reflects the mentality of our times. I go around, meet people and who knows, perhaps I’m gonna find a girl who will put out. I won’t go in depth using Latin quotes about the decadence of manners as “O tempora, o mores” or about the shaky ethics that every day comes from the indiscriminate use of internet. I will regret no more than the era in which the resume was used to appear convincing in front of a potential employer. When it wasn’t used to approach a girl but in the worst case was a shield against little lies as the famous fluent English.

Probably any fearless knight will save the kingdom of LinkedIn but each of us could do something to make it a better place. Three little rules prêt-à-porter:

  1. Choose a serious picture. It doesn’t mean a passport photo or a sad one. A nice smile is always the best presentation. Avoid pics taken on the beach, duck face selfies and happy after party shots.
  2. Don’t lie. If it is not true that you speak Chinese and that you have been a volunteer in India, don’t put it on your CV. It’s better to talk about your internship in which you developed a great ability in doing photocopies than boast about your experiences.
  3. Don’t share personal contents. Shots taken on holiday, pics of your cat or good morning greetings can be posted on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks!

WE ARE NOT NUMBERS

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We are not numbers. We have to do numbers.

We are not made of K or M on Instagram & Co.

We are us. Our essence. Our attitude.

That moment in which you want to communicate something.

Something that sometimes is curious, sad, cheerful, profound and, why not, also “stupid”.

 

OUTFIT

______________________________

jeans/tee Levi’s – sunglasses Valentino – cardigan Amina Rubinacci – bag Burberry – shoes Public Desire – watch Girard Perregaux

MAKE UP

______________________________

foundation Dior Diorskin nude BB cream – Phard Mac cosmetics – Eyeliner Benefit they’re real push up  liner – red lipstick Burberry Full Kisses 

Prime numbers are divisible by one and themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful.

(Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers)

CHOKER STYLE

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Choker style. It was a must have in the ‘90s and now is back again.

I still remember my first choker. There was a period of my life in which Sunday meant: church, buying Cioè at the kiosk, candies, retainer like Ugly Betty and Spice Girls. Yes, my first choker was attached to the first semi-serious magazine I was used to read. It was black, interwoven and perfect for every occasion.

Right, every occasion. And maybe it wasn’t good. Because the choker needs to be coordinated, but I learnt it later…when you are a teenager your style is not well defined and so you can’t understand what you should dress and when you can or cannot.

I’ve just discovered the real origin of this accessory. People who knows me are aware of my tradition to give some historical hints in my posts. Of course, I couldn’t skip the history of this accessory! At least, before to put it on or buy it, you will know the origin and the meanings it had in the past.

The choker was already known in the Middle Ages but became famous in Victorian Age. In that period, the less rich women loved to put a velvet ribbon around the neck to give the look a touch of style. During the French Revolution, the necklace/choker was the symbol of those who protested against Louis XVI and the guillotine. In the course of the centuries it became a sensual accessory.

CHOKER HOW TO STYLE

It is an accessory, therefore you can decide to make it protagonist or no more than something to complete the outfit. I chose three outfits to make your choker practical and stylish.

CHOKER & FRENCH CHIC STYLE

This is one of my favorite styles, it is informal and naturally posh. To create a perfect French look, remember that you need to be fresh-faced. Say no to sexy dresses and keep in mind that the Parisienne style loves neutral colors in summer and dark ones in winter. The ideal outfit mixes vintage items and low cost ones but remember to have special consideration for designer accessories that make a difference. For example, look at my choker by Algares.

CHOKER & ROMANTIC STYLE

To create a romantic outfit using the choker, I suggest you to combine a tulle skirt and a white shirt. Put on a pair of court shoes and add a small and delicate clutch. Don’t forget a red lipstick on your lips. The romantic look is simple but cozy, lines are soft with a retro note.

CHOKER & ROCK STYLE

CHOKER STYLE FASHION BLOGGER

When you say ‘rock’, you say also studded jacket, skinny trousers and boots. But this style could be perceived in many ways. I put together the sparkling leather of the studded jacket, the choker by Algares and a pair of boots. Ripped jeans and a shirt have been perfect to soften the “aggressive” soul of this outfit.

BEAUTY NO SMOG: THE NEW TREND FOR COSMETICS

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BEAUTY NO SMOG. The new trend for cosmetics and skincare is clear. We are going to fight off the effects of aging on skin using creams, lotions, face packs, cleaning soaps & Co.Or this is what they say and we believe. During my latest online shopping experience on the website of Chanel, I discovered an antipollution lotion called Lotion confort. It is a soothing silky lotion alcohol-free that should moisturize and remove any trace of pollution thanks to the precious tulip tree essence. I tested it and it has been love at first sight. A nice and delicate scent that doesn’t attack the skin.

 

SMOG DAMAGES

Don’t underestimate smog damages. Particulates in the air could be very dangerous for the skin. Therefore, it’s very important to add to our beauty routine some antipollution cosmetics in order to defend the skin from the damages caused by external agents like – for example – acne, accelerate aging of skin, cutaneous marks, the alteration of the hydrolipidic film, dry skin.

As concerns the anti-smog line by Chanel, there are also other products that I found interesting like for example Le Bi-Phase visage, an antipollution cleanser that mixes two phases: an aqueous phase (antipollution) and an emulsified one (protective). In addition to Chanel there are many beauty brands that embraced the anti-smog trend, as Collistar. Its hydro protective cream is a moisturizing treatment that preserves and reinforces the skin. It is an anti UV-A and UV-B product, efficient from the morning to the night. Moreover, it’s antipollution and specific against smog, smoke, particulates and free radicals.

Also Clarins dedicates attention to the smog issue and so created a delicate cleaning cream that, thanks its detoxifying and nourishing properties, gives the skin a natural clearness, brightness and beauty and guarantees an outstanding comfort.

Biotherm antipollution products take advantage of an alga rich of Astaxanthin, one of the most powerful natural antioxidants used for the depurative pack Skin Best Wonder Mud. It acts on sebum and impurities that block the pores to “oxygenate” the skin. Confort Zone, a product of the line Skin Defender, is useful to detoxify the skin of people who live in the city. “Detoxifying” from the cosmetic point of view means reducing and removing the impurities to get a purified skin.

A GOOD CLEANSING IS THE BASIC

A regular cleansing, in the morning and in the night, is the basic. Use a manual brush or a sonic skin cleansing system to remove 99,5% of the impurities. They are the best antipollution solutions that will help you to keep the skin always healthy and bright. In this period, I’m using the brush by Philips VisaPure. Among the new entries there’s also Mia Fit by Clarisonic. Mia Fit cleans in depth and removes impurities, sun cream and make-up residuals to leave the skin softer, smooth and bright.