(ANSA) - Organisers of the 2005 Miss Italia beauty pageant have decided to have contestants wear bikinis in the finals as part of a bid to bring the show up-to-date and boost viewing figures.
In recent years would-be Miss Italias wore a range of outfits throughout the five-day TV extravaganza but the most daring were one-piece swimming costumes. Even though the costumes left the back and much of the tummy in view, belly buttons remained chastely covered.
After final night viewing figures last year dipped by a million compared to the previous year and amid criticism of the show's "outdated" format, organisers clearly felt decisive action was needed.
As the early, untelevised stages of the contest kicked off this week, a presentation press conference announced a series of innovations for the finals which will be broadcast live from September 15 to 19. These included a song-and-dance knock-out format in which contestants will show off their performing talents in pairs while viewers vote on which one should be knocked out of the competition.
In the run-up to the final stages, RAI state television will run a daily slot in which the nation can get a first look at all the 101 contestants who have made it through. "This year it's going to be even more televisual and exciting, with a pinch of suspence," said the head of RAI's flagship channel Fabrizio Del Noce.
But the announcement that attracted the most attention at the press conference was when officials revealed that the traditional swimsuit parade would be "no longer in the same old outdated one-piece".
The reaction in the press was generally one of mild bemusement, although one daily, Rome's Il Messaggero, put the news on its front page, with the headline: It's the belly Button that Counts.
"The hope is that such generosity will give some oxygen to a spectacle which has in recent years looked somewhat out of breath, behind the times, unable to renew itself and weakened by the competition," the daily's analyst remarked.
Corriere della Sera cast doubt on whether the move was really as daring and contemporary as organisers believed, suggesting sarcastically that the Italian public was unlikely to be impressed. "It's surprising, perhaps, for a TV audience which a) has no subscription to Sky satellite TV; b) doesn't watch reality shows; and c) is seriously interested in the event."
One newspaper's female commentator admitted however that bikinis did make beautiful girls even more so and gave a helping hand to less stunning ones. In the Miss Italia of 1951, bikinis - at that time worn by only some contestants - were prohibited because they constituted an "unfair advantage", presumably because they caused befuddlement among male judges.
They reappeared in the contests of the early 1970s but were then phased out again and the one-piece has been standard for at least 20 years. The precise shape and size of the 2005 bikinis, which will be the same for all competitors, has yet to be revealed.
