Who decides the rules of dignity?

This article is published in issue 48 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until November 29, 2022

Do you agree that there is no right or wrong way to live your feelings, just as there is no right or wrong way to live in general, other than being as honest and respectful with yourself as possible? and towards others? Just as everyone lives – or should live – in their own way, so everyone knows how they prefer – or are capable of – facing pain, mourning, illness, problems. There are those who are better off sharing them, while those who prefer to elaborate them in private. There are those who remove them and those who push them away to deal with them when he succeeds. Those who throw themselves headlong into it, those who don’t talk about anything else, those who need to be alone and those who prefer to try to lead the usual life. Who does a bit of one and a bit of the other, depending on how they are. “I’m very sorry I didn’t stay home to respect the pain of those who suffer because I didn’t stay home. For real. I am close to you,” wrote Selvaggia Lucarelli bitterly, in response to those who criticized her for participating in dancing with the Stars the day his mother died. There were many who attacked her, not just the usual nameless trolls who spend their lives messing around on social media. As if it weren’t obvious that losing a mother is such a deep pain that one can only offer condolences to those who experience it, and nothing else. What can lead a person to criticize someone who is experiencing a similar loss? In the name of what does he do it? Many have commented negatively, some with real malice, even on the tears of the honorable Aboubakar Soumahoro, who in the same days shared a video in which he responds heartily to the attacks received as a result of the investigation into two cooperatives run by his wife and mother-in-law. In the case of Lucarelli, the detractors have accused her of coldness and “lack of dignity”, in the case of Soumahoro of too much warmth and “lack of dignity”. But who decides the rules of dignity? Dignity is a beautiful thing that everyone wears and interprets in their own way, as they know and how they can, something that has a lot to do with respect and honesty towards oneself.

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