The Crown, Megxit and Io Donna

There are no tabloids as such in Italy and other non-English speaking countries. The phone-hacking shenanigans of the likes of  News of the World (now defunct) and the vicious personal attacks on the Royal family by The Daily Mail are a peculiarly British phenomenon. Charlie Beckett wrote, a few years ago,  an excellent piece about the tabloids (or gutter press), which he believes are, regardless, a vital part of British life. I will not go into it now, but I find Beckett's analysis very compelling and would recommend reading it.
(I had a very close friend, a historian by training and a professional journalist who used to write for the tabloids; from him, I learnt much about word mongering and sensational copy but that is another story).
Of course, the absence of tabloids only means that the tabloid discourse is relayed through other media, such as television. That's where you find the trash, at least in Italy.  There are also weeklies (Gente, Chi, Oggi) devoted to celebrity gossip, pretty similar to Hello magazine, whose blueprint is the Spanish Hola!).
Italian newspapers, set apart by their political allegiances, and by and large carrying serious analyses and news -  obviously - also have a weekly magazine supplement, usually addressing their female readership.  Surprise surprise, these magazines have gossip columns.
  Io Donna, (lit. I Woman) for example, is the supplement of the Corriere della Sera. It usually has a mixed bag of articles on a number of topics, mostly lifestyle, some good,  some bad, and two sections, 'People ' and 'Royals' in which celebrities and royal families, especially British Royals, are discussed in a "light-hearted way". 
The British Royals have always enjoyed popularity abroad. When I was growing up in Italy it was Princess Margaret, her love life, and her alleged tense relationship with her sister the Queen that would be discussed at some length.  I moved to Britain in the late 1970s, so from then on, I became more acquainted with the Royals through the British press, both broadsheets, which tend to provide analysis and tabloids. The latter are everywhere, some are even distributed free of charge, You can't live in the UK and not see the bold headlines of the tabloids.
 I am not a royalist. I am fully aware of the enormous costs to taxpayers that are involved in enabling the Royals - the British monarchy, far from being a fairy tale,  is an archaic institution with major economic implications.
The whole Meghan Markle affair, the Megxit (after Brexit, a name given to it by the tabloids), leaves me quite indifferent to any speculation on the future of the monarchy. To be totally honest, I would not be saddened by its demise. The number of people who share my views is increasing. Great Britain is certainly not a country of republicans, god forbid, but questions on whether the monarchy should continue are being asked.
As I recall, I would not say that Italians particularly care about the British Royal family (whom they do not have to support financially, anyway), but they enjoy a good gossip. The Netflix series The Crown has created a huge, quite unprecedented appetite, globally,  for Royal family gossip and has coloured the perception of British Royals, with people now believing that the British Royals are characters in a big soap opera.
Thus, and unsurprisingly, in Italy at the moment there is much curiosity about the dramas of the Royal family  - quite a few, actually; apart from Megxit there is the great embarrassment of Prince Andrew and his friendship with Epstein. The Sun called him Prince Endy, in a recent headline, when he was apparently "stripped of his Royal duties".

 I was curious about the  Io Donna coverage, with podcasts widely advertised on social media. The magazine purports to address women of today, discussing a number of relevant issues. I thought that the writing about the British Royal family would provide some fresh analysis, from a different perspective - Italy is quite far from Britain geographically and also culturally; the only recent history the two countries have shared is membership of the EU but that has now ended.  
I perused the articles and found them rather bland and gossipy, rehashing what I already knew, with a complete lack of insightful comments - for example, what does it mean to have a member of the Royal family who is entangled in a scandal involving the sexual exploitation of young women? Hello,  have you not heard of the #metoo movement?
I listened to the podcasts, hoping to find something there, and was extremely disturbed by what I heard. The podcasts, discussing the Duchess of Sussex, were infused with News of the World-like venom and veiled racism. The Duchess of Sussex was described as a social climber, hungry for money, duplicitous, an American (the word heavily stressed as to convey some 'special' meaning), a woman who would not hesitate to get rid of her own family to advance her career and so on. Even though I am not personally an enthusiastic supporter of the Duchess, this kind of personal attack is unacceptable, on any woman.
It was extremely sad to be listening to this knowing that the author of the articles and curator of the podcasts is, in fact, a woman, a journalist whom I used to hold in high esteem, as she has written extensively about ageing and ageism.
But people change and women can sometimes be extremely vicious when discussing other women, they can, in fact, be the worst misogynists, having internalised misogyny as a behaviour.
Most of all, it was very irritating for me to see a magazine supposedly aimed at educated and professional women carrying such trash under the guise of "light-hearted gossip".
It's 2020.  Are sexism, misogyny and racism what Corriere della Sera and Io Donna can offer to their female readership? Surely, we deserve better.

*** I am writing this on International Women's Day, so I feel particularly incensed ***