In her video performances, artist Francesca Lolli uses the body to challenge the patriarchal constraints that shape women’s lives and dominant beauty standards, understood as a means of limiting women’s autonomy
When in 1990 Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth – a study that second-wave feminists greatly praised – Western women were being bombarded by the unrealistic models of female beauty proposed by the mass media and fashion industry of the time.
Since then, these demanding standards have not only persisted, but have become increasingly unattainable. Gloria Steinem – American writer, journalist and social movement activist – endorsed Wolf’s analysis with a quote on the cover of the 1992 reprint of the book: “Every woman should read it”. Despite Wolf’s recent ideological swing, her iconic work was very powerful at the time. In the early 2000s, Rosalind Gill argued that we live in an era of contradictory constructions of gender in global media where displays of ‘girl power’ alternate frequently with pervasive images of women’s objectification. Similarly, later analyses by Lorella Zanardo, Natasha Walter and Michela Marzano pointed in the same direction.
It is within this context that we can situate Francesca Lolli’s work: born in Perugia (Italy) in 1976, Lolli is an emerging Italian performance and video artist, actress, and filmmaker with a focus on gender-related issues from a global perspective, who has interrogated the sociocultural constraints and beauty standards imposed on women in contemporary society since the beginning of her career. In Lolli’s work, audiences encounter what Sara Papini describes as “energy, anger, and struggle” grounded in feminist concerns. Her performances – alongside those of Elena Bellantoni, Elisabetta Disopra, Eleonora Manca, and Debora Vrizzi – have been identified as instruments of “urgenza espressiva” within the Italian video art context, particularly through their use of the female body as a site of critique.
Today, women are influenced not only by magazines, billboards, and television programmes – as was the case at the time of Wolf’s publication – but increasingly by social media platforms. These environments, in which authenticity is manipulated through filters, contribute to the construction of even more unrealistic beauty standards. For non-white, non-Western, gender non-conforming, plus-size, disabled women, and other marginalised identities, the pressure to conform to dominant beauty norms escalate. Nevertheless, a number of inclusive initiatives and pages on these platforms have emerged in recent years. Despite these efforts, social media, where retouched pictures, altered reels and stories, as well as “inspirational” hashtags circulate daily, continue to offer a distorted perception of reality through highly manipulated content. Although many women appear complicit in promoting these unattainable ideals, such dynamics undermine self-esteem and contribute to problematic relationships with the body.
Michela Marzano argues that the cult of beauty is not simply a matter of appearance but a deeper issue related to an attempt to reinforce or restore women’s traditional sociocultural roles and perpetuate their marginality to current sociosymbolic systems. As she observes, it is women’s own achievements that are increasingly being called into question, not only through the commodification of the female body but also through a regressive ideology seeking to reverse progress. Marzano echoes Wolf’s interpretation of the beauty imperative as a powerful political sedative to contain women’s sociocultural, economic and reproductive autonomy.
As a medium, video performance is very effective in conveying urgent sociopolitical issues within a short temporal framework. Moreover, video artists frequently disseminate their work through the internet, including social media platforms, thereby reaching wide and diverse audiences. Lolli uses these digital spaces to extend the impact of her video art projects. By foregrounding her own body as the central “character” in her works, Lolli challenges dominant expectations surrounding women’s beauty, behaviour, and social roles, while critiquing patriarchal structures from both local and global perspectives. As she states on her blog, her artistic practice adopts a critical view of social, political and cultural issues.
Lolli’s extensive body of work demonstrates how artists and filmmakers can effectively engage audiences through digital platforms, while underscoring the potential of video performance to raise awareness of the mechanisms through which patriarchal power operates. In particular, the video performances In Uterus (Following Patriarchal Beauty Standards Since 1976), Dolorosa Mater, YOUNG | BEAUTIFUL | FLAWLESS, La santa e la puttana and Oh My Tits (2024), as their titles signify, focus on patriarchal impositions on women’s lives. In these works, Lolli extends her critique of mainstream beauty expectations as a powerful political sedative in women’s quest towards equality.
Lolli is among those performers who openly reject the backlash of patriarchy, using performance as an active intervention in ongoing discussions of contemporary womanhood. As she argues, even when her female protagonists appear to succumb, they continue to voice a desperate call to end all forms of abuse, domination, indoctrination, and the sociocultural superstructures that sustain them.
References
F. Calamita, Ti trovo cambiata. Italiane si raccontano, oggi. 60 anni dopo “Le italiane si confessano” di Gabriella Parca, Milan, Enciclopedia delle donne, 2026.
P. Deggiovanni, Antologia critica della videoarte italiana 2010-2020, Turin, Edizioni Kaplan, 2019.
R. Gill, Gender and the Media, Cambridge, Polity, 2007.
M. Marzano, Sii bella e stai zitta. Perché l’Italia di oggi offende le donne, Milan, Mondadori, 2010.
N. Walter, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, London, Virago, 2010.
N. Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, London, Vintage, 1991.
L. Zanardo, Il corpo delle donne, documentary film, 2009.
