Fluff is a word that moves well in the mouth, almost onomatopoeic. It makes you immediately understand that there is a lot of air and little concreteness. It is a term that, personally, I often use in speech to refer to all those huckster situations, those that even from afar smell like a rip-off. Like when I read the word “green” or the overused “organic”. I also felt that sensation in recent days, when I received a proposal from a well-known banking institution: they asked me to present a meeting where, starting from the release of a book which talks about women and money, to presence of the author and the president of the same bank, among others, the thorny issue of female economic independence would then have to be addressed. Cool! I thought. A week to read the book and prepare wasn’t much, but it’s my job and it’s a topic that interests me. I accept and indicate my compensation. The answer is the perfect definition of fluff. “The available budget does not allow us to complete the request made”.

You will think of an exorbitant financial request, but we are on the verge of a nice dinner for two in a restaurant. The short circuit served: bank, money, women, economic independence, no budget. I take the liberty of writing to the author of the book, a journalist I follow, to inform her of the story, imagining that she is unaware of it. In fact this is the case, but the fact of having contacted her triggers panic at the top of the banking institution which even inconveniences the head of the institutional communications office to patch up something that is worse than the hole. “Good morning Anna”, followed by a presentation with name, surname and role. I remain a proper name, on the other side there is an institutional figure. We’re off to a bad start. Followed by the sound of nails on the mirror. “We usually do it”, “we are characterized by sobriety”, “she was contacted by the voluntary members”.

Apart from the fact that the request came directly from the president, who hired an associate to do the dirty work, the rest is just fluff, with a pinch of buck-passing that makes everything even more embarrassing. We can also leave aside the feminist aspect of the issue (the meeting is included in the calendar of the municipality where I live, i.e. Udine, on the occasion of the international day against violence against women): even just focusing on the ethical aspect of recognizing the work of others, gender aside, the whole story is wrong. The presumption that professional people should give up their work for free represents the rotten foundation on which our society is based. The presumption that since we are all women we must help each other represents, however, the rotten foundations of a facade feminism which is only very harmful pinkwashing. “There is still a long way to go” is a phrase that, in this story, only I can pronounce.