By now, we are sure, most of you will read of Lady Gaga’s announcement that she wants a child – by a Sicilian. Speaking to the Spanish radio station Radio Ibiza on the occasion of the opening of her Italian restaurant in Manhattanat the beginning of February, the singer said that, although she is happy with her very American boyfriend Taylor Kinney, she would like to have a child by IVF via an Italian – preferably Sicilian – donor within the year. She is rumoured to have consulted several top Italian gynaecologists who do not, of course, discuss their patients with the media.
Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, has Sicilian ancestry and says that she grew up surrounded by Sicilian objects belonging to her grandparents, who were from the town of Naso in Messina Province. She also said that she remembers her grandparents’ stories and that her Italian origins are very important to her.
So are Sicilian men going Gaga and fighting each other to become the donor? Apparently not, for two reasons: Firstly, the probability of IVF treatment being made available to Lady Gaga on Italian soil is virtually nil as under Italy’s “Law40”only married or cohabiting heterosexual couples with fertility problems can be helped in this way and applicants cannot choose the provenance of a donor. Secondly, although there are certainly “new men” who help in the house and in the bringing up of children in Sicily, the concept of the traditional family is strong in the South and the idea of “designing” a child is anathema to most.
Lady Gaga has not helped her cause any further by declaring that, although she wants a child, she does not really want a man “under her feet” and that she has not ruled out the possibility that the “father” could be a woman. If her original proposal to “engineer” a child has scandalised many Sicilian men, this second suggestion has horrified them.
However, if the singer were to decide to take an extended holiday on the island, enjoying balmy, jasmine-scented summer nights under a moon that would seem so near that she would feel she could touch it and were she to display a propensity to fall in love here, then she would find no shortage of takers.
