A leading Italian scientist has hit back at people who bombarded her with sexist comments after she posted a video of herself in a low-cut dress online.
Gabriella Greison, 51, a nuclear physicist and expert on quantum mechanics, posted the video to her 156,000 followers on Instagram as she prepared to leave Linate airport in Milan for an academic event in Sicily.
She was wearing a pale green dress in the footage as she outlined what she planned to say as a guest of honour at a graduation ceremony for the University of Messina in Taormina.
Greison in the dress that caused such a stir online
Her video was liked more than 2,000 times, but also drew misogynistic reactions: “You’re just an old maid who needs to show off, not having anything to say,” wrote one commenter.
“The inexorable advance of age pushes some women to shoot their last fireworks,” offered another.
“Indecent clothing, vulgar, undignified,” proclaimed a third critic.
A scientific populariser who has performed theatrical texts based on some of her books, Greison decided to tackle her critics with irony. She had prepared for the event with a riveting speech and a light summer dress “that made me feel happy”, she wrote in reply.
“And we’re in 2025. That is: the world is burning, the glaciers are melting, artificial intelligence reads our minds … and you’re upset that a woman talks about science with an attractive décolleté? Are you serious?”
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Greison argued that what disturbed the misogynists was that a woman could talk about science without looking like a man and without asking permission: “That she can take the stage, explain the wave function [a concept from quantum mechanics] and Schrödinger, and also have tits. Oops,” she wrote.
She added that she had changed into an even more daring red dress for the ceremony and enjoyed a fantastic occasion with enthusiastic graduates and staff.
Greison at the graduation ceremony
“Today is not just a ceremony, it’s telling the world that we’re here, we’re ready,” she told the students.
“The real world gave me only pleasure that day in Taormina,” she said afterwards.
Greison suggested she was used to sexism as she recalled seeing a luminary of quantum physics struggling to open his computer at an international conference. A colleague who gave him a hand quipped: “You’re worse than my wife,” and everyone laughed, she recalled.
“As long as we hear jokes like that the road will always be a little more difficult for women,” she said. “In the world of physics it’s not unusual to be asked to take off your heels or put away your lipstick.”
‘In a front-page comment on internet pile-ons, the Corriere della Sera newspaper criticised those behind online vitriol seen across social media.
“We live under the tireless gaze of a moral police that judges everything that others do, always stopping at appearances and turning nasty, not when it catches the victim behaving aggressively but in a moment of serenity,” the paper said.