The Hand Gesture Heard Round the World

Personalized celebrations have become an indelible part of football, so when Tommy DeVito, the third-string quarterback for the New York Giants, threw one of his first touchdowns in November, he raised a right hand and pinched his finger and thumb together in an Italian gesture that means, roughly, “Whaddya want?”

People noticed.

A few weeks later, when DeVito was leading the Giants to a thrilling 24-22 victory over the Green Bay Packers at home, thousands of fans joined in by pinching their fingers and waving the backs of their hands toward the field. The gesture was trumpeted on sports broadcasts, adapted to sweatshirts and noted on sports pages all the way to Italy. DeVito explained that the gesture came naturally, citing “old Italians” who, “when they talk, they start doing this. It’s just a little credit to them.”

DeVito’s moment in the spotlight brought some excitement to a disappointing Giants team, even if he’s finishing the season, which concludes Sunday, as a backup quarterback once again. His moment, and its signature gesture, also filled some Italian American observers, including me, with no small amount of ambivalence, even embarrassment. While some fans were proud to see an Italian boy (raised in New Jersey, no less) taking center stage, others cringed at the resurgent popularity of old-school stereotypes, given how Italian American culture can too easily warp quickly into cliché, recalling the excesses of middling mob movies and “Jersey Shore.” I grimaced as I watched the gesture explode all over social media, not least in an endless procession of TikTok videos and Instagram reels set to a Louis Prima song. My apprehension wasn’t helped by the fact that DeVito’s agent, who is also Italian American, attended games dressed floridly in a pinstriped suit and a black fedora. Before season’s end, the sudden star quarterback was drawing criticism for basking a little too enthusiastically in the limelight.

It’s both a truism and the truth that Italians talk with their hands, a trait that most likely developed as a way to ease communication in a country where dialects can differ from village to village. Most of these hand gestures have specific meanings that are recognized throughout Italy, as well as by Italian Americans. I’ve since realized that these gestures, in their evolving meaning, aren’t just a stereotypical throwback or simply a secret language. They exemplify the vitality of my culture and are proof of the vibrant resiliency of our experience.

Growing up on the west coast of Florida, I didn’t encounter the density of Italians that exists in the Northeast, which is where my father, a first-generation Italian American, was raised. Our Florida friends often teased that they knew my family was Italian because of the way we talked with our hands. There’s an old joke: How do you stop an Italian from talking? Tie his hands behind his back. While the comment (and the joke) didn’t necessarily offend me, it did make me aware that I possessed an additional way of communicating that seemed to set me apart.

DeVito’s pinched fingers aren’t the first gesture to stake a claim on the popular consciousness. One of my teenage music idols, the Italian American rock musician Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath, is credited with popularizing the heavy metal devil-horns gesture back in the early 1980s, and he claimed he cribbed it from his grandmother. In Italian culture, the gesture is referred to as “la mano cornuta,” or the sign of the horns, and represents an attempt to ward off the “malocchio,” or the evil eye. But Mr. Dio transformed the symbol into one of celebratory rock ’n’ roll rebelliousness, his horns held upright and defiantly above his head.