A provocative statue of a curvy mermaid is making waves in the southern Italian town of Monopoli.
It was created by students from the Luigi Rosso art school in Monopoli after a commission from the local municipality and is located near to a children's playground. It is part of a €350,000 redevelopment of the area. "You see adverts on television with models who are very thin, but the mermaid is like a tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy, especially in our country. It would have been very bad if we had represented a woman who was extremely skinny."
Tiziana Schiavarelli, an actress from the nearby city of Bari, wrote on Facebook that a friend from Monopoli had been"rightly perplexed" by the monument.
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