French Minister's Playboy Cover Shoot Sparks Controversy, Magazine Says 'Not Soft Porn'
Can posing for Playboy be interpreted as a feminist statement? A French minister believes so and has defended her decision to appear on the front cover of the infamous magazine while dressed.
Marlene Schiappa, a French minister, has sparked outrage after appearing on the cover of Playboy magazine. Schiappa, who describes herself as a "sapiosexual," will be dressed in attire for the magazine's French edition, and her 12-page interview will cover topics such as abortion, women's rights, and LGBT rights.
Her political colleagues, including French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, have criticised her decision.
"Defending women's right to do whatever they want with their bodies: everywhere and all the time," Schiappa said in a tweet that was roughly translated from French. "Women are free in France. Whether or not it irritates the retrogrades and hypocrites."
Défendre le droit des femmes à disposer de leurs corps, c’est partout et tout le temps.
En France, les femmes sont libres.
N’en déplaise aux rétrogrades et aux hypocrites.#Playboy— 🇫🇷 MarleneSchiappa (@MarleneSchiappa) April 1, 2023
Schiappa is said to be the first female politician to grace the cover of Playboy France.
Marlene Schiappa, the current Minister of Social Economy and French Associations, is 40 years old. In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron plucked her from obscurity.
According to CNN, Schiappa, a feminist author, has long been an advocate for women's rights and was named the country's first Gender Equality Minister in 2017. During this time, she successfully advocated for a new sexual harassment law that allows men who catcall, harass, or follow women on the street to be fined on the spot.
Controversy Around Schiappa's Playboy Cover Photo:
Some people saw Schiappa wearing designer dresses for a glamour magazine as sending the wrong message, with one person saying they thought it was an April Fool's joke when they first heard about it.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, only the second woman to hold the position, called Schiappa to tell her that it "was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period," an aide told AFP on Saturday.
Sandrine Rousseau, a Greens MP, and fellow women's rights activist said on Saturday: "Where is the respect for the French people?" "People who are going to have to work for two years more, who are demonstrating, who are losing days of pay, who aren't able to eat because of inflation?" she asked the BFM channel. "I don't have a problem with women's bodies being exposed anywhere, but there is a social context."
'Not Soft Porn': Playboy On Controversy
Playboy has defended the spread that will appear in the French-language edition of its magazine.
Schiappa was the "most 'Playboy compatible" of government ministers "because she is attached to women's rights and she has understood that it's not a magazine for old machos but could be an instrument for the feminist cause," AFP editor Jean-Christophe Florentin said.
"Playboy is not a soft porn magazine, but a 300-page quarterly'mook' (a cross between a book and a magazine) that is intellectual and on-trend," Florentin explained, admitting that "there are still a few undressed women, but they're not the majority of the pages."
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