Who’s afraid of love?

This article is published in issue 8 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 21, 2023

Last week, Sabrina, a reader living in Rome, 45 years old, married with two children, wrote me this email.

Dear director, even though in my heart I always knew it, now I am sure that my second child is gay. He’s not 14 yet. He is very feminine and I would say asexual. He seems serene to me. But although it has always been clear in the family that there was no problem about it, he doesn’t talk about this subject easily. I don’t understand how he feels about his body. Lately, he asked me if he could shave his legs. I’m not sure what’s best to do and I never understand how much I have to intervene and how much to let everything go naturally.

As I write this editorial, the Sanremo Festival has been over for two days. By the time you read it, the event will already be a thing of the past. Of what happened on the Ariston stage and around it, however, I want to take only one thing with me: the kisses. And don’t just think of Rosa Chemical’s kiss to Fedez. I’m talking about all the other forgotten kisses. Gianni Morandi’s tender kiss to his wife Anna Dan to whom he wrote “I would marry you 100 more times”. Drusilla’s fighting kiss to activist Pegah Moshir Pouh or Elodie’s sisterhood kiss to BigMama. The kiss in love of the Coma Cose. In the kisses of Sanremo there was not only “gender propaganda”, as some continue to maintain. There was heterosexual love and there was the love that is created between those who fight for the same sacred and important battles. In the kisses of Sanremo there was love. Point. And love isn’t just between a man and a woman, just as it isn’t just between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. The problem with love, then, is not who gives the kisses, but who judges them. Especially those who feel threatened by kisses. Who proposes a single gender, a single type of sexuality, a single model of kisses and love. But love and kisses are free and cannot be put in a cage. Love and kisses, above all, indicate roads. The road of stories that stand the test of time, like that of Gianni Morandi and Anna Dan. The road of adventures that end and then, sometimes, start again, like that of Coma Cose. The path of female solidarity, such as that between Drusilla and Pegah Moshir Pouh and between Elodie and BigMama. Or, again, the path of all other possible, plausible and respectable loves and kisses, such as the one between Rosa Chemical and Fedez. The kisses, all the kisses, are also the answer to Sabrina’s email: there is love for everyone. And it will never be perfect, nor just beautiful, nor just very ugly. It will be love. Because kisses or love are never the problem. The problem is who is afraid of kisses. Who is afraid of love.

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