MAMA BOY

Every now and then I get comments on Going Dutch from round the world (it's now been translated into 8 languages), either agreeing with me or putting me right. This one comes from an Italian called Marco, and I thought I'd share it. Coming from an Italian man, it may be the last word on Italian men:

I read your book while backpacking in Patagonia for a little more than 2 weeks. I spent most of my life travelling the world and so I found myself agreeing with you in almost everything, in particular when you talk about Japan and Japanese. I lived there for 4 years and for work I'm going back very often, almost too often sometimes.There is only a couple of things I quite disagree and I'd like to share them with you. I don't remember at what point of the book you mention something about Italians being just MAMA-BOY and to be helpless Playboy. First of all, even if was true that men stay with their family till their early thirties I don't really see what is wrong with that? Everybody is travelling the world to discover the different way people live their life but as soon as the italians don't show enough machisimo or we, I'm 100% italian too, we don't fit in the western's idea of when men have to live their family's homes...and so people call us MAMA-BOY. Plus if a man in a family is a MAMA-BOY trust me that the responsibility is more on the MAMA then the boy. I really don't know many of those MAMA-BOY in Italy but I swear I know lots of them in USA where it seems that the majority of the white-trash men are REALLY MAMA-BOY. Anyway, what I really want you to know that maybe Italians are playboy, maybe it's true that we flirt a lot...but you know what Mark? It works. It really does and women love it. In 10 days in Chile I slept with 4 girls. I didn't pay them, if that what you think and they are all attractive western woman. I'm proud of it? Not particularly, I'm sure that the same girls may have fallen for somebody else but they did for me because FIRST I tried, SECOND... I gave them attentions they won't get anywhere else. "Italians do it better" because we care more about a woman's pleasure than our own. That's the reason why women love Italian men.They love other men too but no one has our reputation and other men from other nationalities are always trying to make fun of us or actually embarrass us but they often do it because they know the difference. Mark trust me I'm not trying to convince no one that italian men are better, not at all, I wouldn't wish my sister to date an italian trust me, but is true that what we often do to seduce a woman is the what many women want.That's all, so maybe you can add a few lines in the new edition of your book. Or not!