No bikini for 'ugly' women

Rome (UPI): The mayor of a seaside resort has ruffled feathers by suggesting that only beautiful women should be allowed to walk around his town in a bikini, Italian media reported Saturday.

"I don't want people who don't have a good physique walking the streets in their swimming costumes," said Andrea Guglieri, who runs Diano Marina in northwest Italy.

He told the Turin daily La Stampa that a beautiful woman in a bikini was fine but that the ugly ones would do better to stick to the beach.

Guglieri said he had not actually passed a decree to enforce the ban, but added: "Our policemen know perfectly well what they must do."

Other seaside towns, such as Alassio, Imperia and Sanremo, have introduced bikini bans, but they have not made any invidious aesthetic distinctions and have also banned men from walking about town bare-chested.

La Stampa said Diano Marina's deputy mayor, Stefano Zecchi, had commissioned a university professor of aesthetic to draw up a 10-point guide to help local officials to make distinctions.

Simona Ventura, a popular television personality, said the mayor was guilty of intolerable discrimination.

"Obviously, you can't draw up a guide to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly.

Either everyone is forbidden to wear a bikini in the street or no one is," she said. "And I would like to see how handsome the mayor is."