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Controversy has broken out in Italy over a video of a 13-year-old girl on a catwalk, wearing a bikini and high heels, during a Miss Italia Mascotte beauty pageant.<\/p>\n
The event took place a few weeks ago in the southern Campania region but the case of the underage girl was brought to light on Monday by Italian journalist and television personality Selvaggia Lucarelli.<\/p>\n
“Good evening everyone, good evening jury, I’m 13 years old and I’m competing as a Mascotte” – the girl says into the microphone in the video – “I’m a very determined girl, full of dreams. I’d like to be a model, and social media is already giving me an extra push to believe in myself.”<\/p>\n
Lucarelli interviewed Antonio Contaldo, the Miss Italy representative for Campania, who allowed the child on stage despite being underage.<\/p>\n
“The girl wanted to play, and we let her play,” he explained.<\/p>\n
Reaction<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0Miss Italia patron, Patrizia Mirigliani, was quick to react to the case\u00a0which\u00a0has sparked a major debate on social media in Italy.<\/p>\n In a statement, she announced the “immediate revocation of Antonio Contaldo’s role as regional exclusive representative for Campania”, describing the\u00a0girl’s participation\u00a0as “absolutely morally unacceptable, a very serious violation of the regulations”.<\/p>\n In order to parade in the Miss Mascotte event, participants must be aged at least 18.\u00a0The last underage Miss Italia was 17-year-old Daniela Ferolla in 2001.<\/p>\n Mirigliani said she raised the age limit years ago, “precisely to avoid the presence of minors, a rule that must be respected even more so among mascots.”<\/p>\n Social media<\/strong><\/p>\n In an Instagram post highlighting the case, Lucarelli wrote:<\/p>\n “Behind the story is a mother who has been pushing the girl on the catwalk since she was 7, a cousin who has been promoting her on social media with questionable videos, and a world in which young girls are increasingly sexualized at an early age to make them famous on social media.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Girl, 13, parades on catwalk in Miss Mascotte event. Controversy has broken out in Italy over a video of a 13-year-old girl on a catwalk, wearing a bikini and high heels, during a Miss Italia Mascotte beauty pageant. The event took place a few weeks ago in the southern Campania region but the case of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[18603,1796,11069,16526,4836,38,18602,6181],"class_list":["post-25296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eventi","tag-13yearold","tag-bikini","tag-girl","tag-heels","tag-high","tag-italia","tag-pageant","tag-spa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}