Adalgisa had worked in cabarets since the age of 20. She liked singing, dancing and she boasted to everyone that she too had met actors who later became famous. Everyone complimented her because she had a beautiful voice and a physique, which as she herself said: "not for nothing but I made everyone's heads turn". She was very sought after in her clothing and she always said that, once the war was over, she was finally able to start buying new clothes and following the fashions of the time.

She always recounted these same scenes while she sat, rolled up in the sheets, in the orthopedic bed of the 4-bed room of the RSA where she had been hospitalized for two years because she "could no longer be alone". “But you can't walk? Why don't you get up?" Adalgisa makes the gesture of lowering her voice and asks her interlocutor to come a little closer. “Let's speak softly here, even the walls have ears. You see, I've always dressed in a certain way, you can't imagine who knows what, but never a hair out of place, a stain on my dress... here they make me dress in a tracksuit because they say it's more comfortable. But who is it most comfortable for? For them. I wear the tracksuit, and I think this one I'm wearing isn't even mine, I was saying, I've never used the tracksuit in my life, I've never liked it and I've never even done gymnastics, I already moved around quite a bit while dancing.

Here, however, everyone in overalls, men and women, sometimes cuts your hair so short that you even struggle to recognize a person's gender. With the suit we are all the same, obviously I didn't serve in the military, but here it's worse than a barracks. I never receive visitors but it's better this way because I would be ashamed to be seen in these conditions. I would love to have an elegant dress and go out for a walk in the city." How much does it cost the State, society, to make an elderly woman dress well?