'Curvy' mermaid statue criticised for being 'too sexual'

A statue of a mermaid with large breasts and a generous bottom has caused a splash in Italy, with critics saying it is too sexual to be on public display.

The statue has been unveiled in the resort town of Monopoli in Puglia, a region in Italy’s far south.

With its large buttocks and soccer ball-shaped breasts, the voluptuous sculpture is a far cry from the world’s most famous depiction of a siren - the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, a slight figure delicately rendered in bronze.

The Italian statue, in contrast, has “two silicone t--s that would make a plastic surgeon blush”, Tiziana Schiavarelli, a local actress, wrote on Facebook. “It has a huge a--e that you’d never see on a mermaid - at least not one that I have ever seen.”

People in the town were “perplexed” by the statue, she said, adding: “Who knows - it might become a tourist attraction.”

To make matters worse, the public artwork overlooks a children’s playground. And it has been placed in a piazza that commemorates one of Italy’s most respected women - Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who was also a Holocaust survivor.

The statue was made by students from a local art school and was defended by the headmaster, Adolfo Marciano.

The buxom mermaid “should be interpreted as a homage to women who are beautiful and curvy. We’ve had enough of seeing models with perfect bodies”, he said.

He added that he believed the work was “a representation of reality, in this case of the female body”.

There was a similar controversy when the statue of a female farmworker was unveiled in the town of Sapri in the southern region of Campania two years ago.

The bronze statue was meant to commemorate a figure from a 19th century poem called La Spigolatrice di Sapri (The Gleaner of Sapri).

But the woman was portrayed in a revealing dress that hung provocatively off one shoulder.

It was criticised as being inappropriate and overly sexual. It was “an offence to women and to the history that it should have celebrated”, said Laura Boldrini, a former speaker of the lower house of parliament.