In the series Kay Ballard played a colorfully streotypical Italian mom, complete with colorful Italian gestures. Sometime ago I read a humorous comic (I think it ran in The National Lampoon) which gave me the idea that the gestures that Kay Ballard used were actually incredibly offensive possibly even obscene. So that’s the question. Did Kay Ballard pull one over on the TV censors and use actual Italian obscene gestures or did the comic simply use Kay’s gestures because they were so familar to baby boomers?
First, it was called “The Mothers-in-Law”. And as someone who grew up in an Italian neighborhood, I can tell you that the gestures were not obscene. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing those gestures outside of TV shows. The Italians I grew up with were pretty verbal and tended not to rely on gestures (except for the ones we’re all familiar with) but rather gesticulations for emphasis.