[1][2] As Stajano herself told the story, her grandfather Achille once gave Benito Mussolini the infant Giò to hold in his arms, and the baby peed on the Duce.

She met Giorgio de Chirico, Renato Guttuso, and Alberto Moravia, began a friendship with Novella Parigini, and frequented the circles that Federico Fellini would later portray in La Dolce Vita.

[6] The authorities seized the explicitly gay book, charging her with propagating ideas contrary to "public morals" that were "harmful to customs."

The scandal focused the tabloid press's attention directly on Stajano, who at the time was widely known as the "most famous homosexual in Italy.

It referenced the former king of Italy Umberto II's homosexuality, giving him the nickname "Umbertina," and it featured an orgy where an actor resembling Laurence Olivier participated in drag.

In 1961, mostly because of her celebrity status, Giò was among those people whom the judiciary summoned for questioning over the Balletti verdi [it] gay scandal in the Brescia area.

With the birth of the modern gay activism movement in Italy, which Giò Stajano never joined, and in light of the many social changes of the late 1960s, interest in her scandalous homosexual gossip columns and news waned.

She gave her first interview to journalist Francesco D. Caridi of Il Borghese, a weekly for which Stajano herself had written articles under the pseudonym "Pantera Rosa," wherein she discussed the lives of the Roman aristocracy.

She declared to the press that she wanted to enter a female monastery, but that she could not do so solely because of her gender transition, which was not recognized as legitimate by the Church.

[9] In 2021 Turin's "Lovers Film Festival" dedicated an award to Giò Stajano's memory, naming her "one of the most important and significant figures of Italian LGBTQI+ culture.