From porn to politics: Ilona Staller on Cicciolina and a life of performative seduction

Lifting up her pale blue dress, revealing a thatch of brown hair on her vagina, a lithe blonde woman flounced across a bridge. Biting her finger, an idea seemed to strike her as she turned her back to the guardrail, uncovering her bare behind, to the immediate sounds of cars screeching to a halt beneath the bridge, as an admiring man gushed, look, its Cicciolina! 'I never really liked wearing clothes,' Ilona, or as her stage name goes, Cicciolina, would admit in the documentary ‘La Cicciolina: The Godmother of Scandal’ (2021) – in other words, the performer and the former adult film actor 'loved being seen naked' as she told me when we spoke upon the re-release of her book ‘Memorie’.

Cicciolina’s soft voice floated around me like a lullaby, as I watched ‘Cicciolina Amore Mio’ (1979) where she spoke on the radio. ‘Cicciolini, do you want to go to bed with me?’ she whispered, her eyes hooded and lips covered in a layer of glossy pink. It’s almost hypnotic to hear her say, ‘Tonight, alone with you, I’m giving you lots and lots of kisses.’ Merely hearing her racy undertone seemed to be an aphrodisiac for many in the film, turning a couple’s innocent breakfast to food foreplay and even, as we see later, inducing non-consensual sex. Ilona was acting out her real job as the host of Radio Luna, a private channel where she held erotic talk shows from 1976. 'I was the sexy voice of the night,' she said, 'No one knew who was behind that seductive voice.' This was where she first transformed into Cicciolina and she proudly adds, 'I broke down the monotony of radio broadcasting by introducing Italians to sex on the MHz radio.'

Long blonde hair held in place with a flower wreath or sometimes with two ponytails, and face painted with minimal makeup – the most prominent of which was red lipstick, gave Cicciolina the amateurish features of a young adolescent on the cusp of adulthood, who’d perhaps choose the red lipstick for its adult sensuality. 'I coloured my eyebrows orange – it complimented by blue eyes,' she told Wallpaper, 'People in Rome were stunned – I looked like a living doll.' A sociologist in the documentary, Ivo Stefano Germano, compared her to a Botticelli goddess with her floral wreath – something Ilona had casually picked up at a store and liked. While art historical associations might relate her with a sensuality that is very Italian – indeed men chased her like they would Malèna – however, in flimsy frocks and holding a teddy bear which made her feel secure, Cicciolina also embodied the Lolitaesque fantasy. The photographer Gianfranco Salis recalled this ambivalence when photographing her – 'Innocent chastity and sexual fervour all at once,' he said.

For her ex-husband, Jeff Koons, Ilona was the eternal virgin. 'She is never soiled,' he’d said in an interview in between photoshoots with her, 'Because there is no possibility of that.' Therefore curiously, she was also the virginal maternal. If one must get art historical, Madonna and the child comes to mind, considering Illona too on many occasions revealed one breast as she waved to her fans – or in that one photograph in her wedding dress, where Koons sucked on one breast. Performing and singing – she’d signed with the record label RCA – as Cicciolina at numerous nightclubs, she created a near Edenic atmosphere with snakes and doves in her hand, almost harking back to a time before connotations of sin and shame. 'I was in high demand, drawing thousands of people,' she said, 'On stage, I created my own scenography with special effects – soap bubbles, strobe lights and dry ice – creating an affect like singing among the clouds, moving between the stage and the audience.' It was a fairy-tale atmosphere, she said.

Before Rome, Ilona grew up in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain with her brother and sister – her father worked in the Hungarian cabinet. 'Should I talk about 1956 when Russian tanks entered Budapest?' she said, 'I remember my parents’ fear as they hurriedly took us to the underground shelters of the buildings in Budapest.' It was not until she married Salvatore Martini that she could travel beyond Budapest and escape to Italy in 1972. Her mother had steered her towards modelling from an early age – and she too enjoyed being photographed, so she had been doing advertisement shoots for Hungarian agency MTI, particularly hair and makeup and also – tennis shoes. 'I was a very beautiful young girl – blue eyes, blonde hair, and a figure similar to fairytale ballerinas,' she said, 'The photographers adored me because I was very photogenic and so I could do photos both for major weekly magazines and nude publications.'

Going through her book, I landed on a Jean Paul Gautier show. It was at the Life Ball in Vienna for AIDS research, she recalled, and Jean Paul had invited her. 'I walked the runway wearing a nude dress with painted breasts and pubic area – on my head I wore an angelic crown!” she said. She was modelling in Milan before separating from Salvatore, and after their divorce she met the photographer Riccardo Schicchi in Rome. Ilona is surprisingly subdued when asked about her creative collaborator with whom she set up Radio Luna and a casting agency for adult film stars, Diva Futura. 'I met Riccardo in 1974. I started taking photographs with him and we established a professional partnership that lasted for many years,' was all she said. It was under Riccardo’s directorship that Ilona first stepped into adult films like Cicciolina Amore Mio’ and ‘La conchiglia dei desideri’ (1983) – which were the more popular ones. She also continued acting in mainstream films, even one with Travolta. “‘Cicciolina Amore Mio’ was my first leading role in an erotic, yet fun film,' she said.

Many photographs of Ilona by Riccardo were taken to provoke. One of them was a shot of the Basilica di San Pietro through Ilona’s legs – her public hair right above the dome in geometric perfection. They immediately signalled blasphemy in a Catholic Italian society, and many couldn’t really handle it – she had her driver dressed as Jesus when she won the elections. Cicciolina’s lust in many of Riccardo’s films included homosexual desire, that flitted between existing for and moving beyond male pleasure. When Ilona was invited to talk shows, indignant show organisers would ask her, ‘Did you come from Hungary to moan in Italy?’ She was visibly shocked when a judge on a televised show opined that the more women undressed, the uglier they became. 'I often went of the house without underwear,' Ilona would say in the documentary, ‘Nudity was beautiful to me.' Thus, even before entering politics, her show had some political messaging, one particularly violent one where protesting against nuclear energy and burning the US and USSR flag led her to be dragged down by the organisers – one of them possibly tearing her clothes in the process.

'We never intended to get Cicciolina into Parliament,' said the former Chief Secretary of the Radical Party, which Ilona was a part of, in the documentary – she is very proud of the bills she introduced from 1987 to 1992, like studying sexuality in schools or introducing parks for amorous exchanges. However, her very association with the Party was based on the Party needing her to get them the votes – beyond which they had no requirement of her, and it took them by surprise. When asked what was a moment that she felt wholeheartedly accepted by people who did not have any ulterior motive, she said, 'I have revolutionised Italian society and pushed the boundaries of modesty.'

Thus, it is perhaps her fans in whom she sees herself appreciated the most, calling them cicciolini. 'I enjoyed being admired by my fans while singing nude on stage,' she said, 'I loved engaging with them in a playful – but never vulgar way.' She still sells lingerie she wore on her website – ‘I’m wearing them for you’, the line reads – she reprinted ‘Memorie’ for her fans, she said for whom she’ll leave an imprint of her lipstick-smeared kiss on the book. 'Millions of men around the world still dream of me today,' she signed off, 'Because I exuded sexuality from every pore.'