French minister slammed for appearing on Playboy cover | World News

Could posing for Playboy be a feminist statement? A French government minister thinks so and defends her decision to appear clothed on the cover of the notorious magazine.

Pulled from obscurity by President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, feminist author Marlene Schiappa, 40, is no stranger to controversy and has repeatedly Rage the right wing.

But even the prime minister and left-wing commentators think the minister in charge of socioeconomics and associations has made a mistake with his latest stunt: posing as a Playboy to accompany a 12-page interview on women’s and gay rights and abortion.

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“Defending women’s right to do what they want with their bodies: whenever and wherever they want,” Schiappa tweeted Saturday. “In France, women are free, whether they offend rebels and hypocrites or not.”

The decision angered some colleagues in the government, who have been battling strikes and increasingly violent demonstrations against plans to raise the retirement age by two years.

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Some thought the sight of Schiappa wearing a designer gown for a Glamor magazine sent the wrong message, with one quoted saying they thought it was an April Fool’s joke when they first heard about it.

Prime Minister Elizabeth Bohn, the second woman to hold the post, called Schiappa to tell her it was “not appropriate at all, especially in the current period,” an aide told AFP on Saturday.

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Green Party MP and women’s rights activist Sandrine Rousseau, an outspoken critic of the centrist government, said: “Where is the respect for the French people?

“Those who are going to have to work for another two years, who are demonstrating, who are losing their wages, who are not able to eat because of inflation?” she told the BFM channel on Saturday.

“Women’s bodies should be able to be exposed anywhere, I’m fine with that, but there’s a social context to that.”

– ‘not softcore’ –

Playboy has defended the spread, which will appear in its French edition.

Schiappa was the “most ‘Playboy-compatible'” of the government ministers “because she values ​​women’s rights and understands that this is not a magazine for older men but can be a tool for the feminist cause,” the editor Jean-Christophe Florentin told AFP.

“Playboy isn’t a soft-porn magazine, it’s a 300-page quarterly ‘magazine’ (a hybrid of book and magazine) that’s intellectual and trendy,” Florentin added, while acknowledging that “there are still some naked women, But they’re not most pages.”

Other criticisms of Schiappa centered on the broader issue of the centrist government’s communications tactics.

Macron, who rarely gives interviews to the French media, published a lengthy interview last week in the children’s magazine Pif, le mag, expressing his views on political power and pensions.

Schiappa, a regular on French TV talk shows, introduced legislation to ban catcalling and street harassment during his tenure as equality minister in 2018.

The mother of two was a prolific writer and blogger before entering politics, writing about motherhood, women’s health and the challenges of pregnancy.

She also wrote a 2010 book offering sex tips for people who some critics say are overweight, arguing that it spreads stereotypes.