However, what we want to tell you is not the historic advance of the bikes of the Rising Sun against those of the Old Continent, but the customs clearance of the “nude” on Motociclismo. In those years at the turn of 1970 we are faced with enormous social and cultural changes; the common sense of decency is distorted and suddenly the phenomenon invests every area of society: obviously advertising rides this change. What concerns us veers towards explicit attitudes: we are in the midst of the stereotypes of the dominant male riding a motorcycle and the winking woman.
The first nude look, decidedly super chaste, is that of Laverda and dates back to 1970. Then Italjet and Suzuki are launched with a more direct message and a more exposed female body. The first does it in a really playful and fun way, so much so that the cross Italjets also jump over a turned side B.
The Japanese House aims straight at… breasts: thus, starting in March 1973, Milena, Zelda and Cristina show themselves naked to plead the cause of the two-stroke GT 380, 550 and 750. All this is underlined by the claim “Women and motorcycles are all the same. But some are ‘more equal’. The advertising campaign was decidedly successful also thanks to the photographs -don’t be shy, today’s sixty-year-olds, you remember them all right- taken by Franco Turcati, who was able to make the atmosphere absolutely intriguing, never vulgar.
The “sexy” turn of the newspaper appears to some readers to be too radical a change. The more “conservatives” write letters to Motociclismo in which they are deeply indignant and threaten to abandon what, until the first issue, was their undisputed bible. There are also expressions of applause that counterbalance the scandalous behavior, but the discussion takes on more and more body, so much so that in September 1974 a 4-page report is published with an absolutely explicit title: “
Why so many biotte women on big motorcycles
”. And so on a roundup of images with decidedly scantily clad young ladies…
