Liberté, égalité, décolletage!
A female French lawmaker has come under fire from members of her own party for posing for a très risqué Playboy cover amid ongoing social unrest over pension reforms –and taking a public dig at President Macron in the process.
Marlene Schiappa, a feminist author-turned-junior social economy minister, sparked outrage after appearing in a low-cut white bodysuit exposing her cleavage and spread legs in the April/June issue of the French Playboy.
The Playboy cover will be accompanied by a 12-page interview in which Schiappa, who made a name for herself by spearheading legislation outlawing catcalling and street harassment in France, talks about women’s and LGBTQ rights.
France’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called Schiappa this weekend to say that her photoshoot and Playboy interview were “not at all appropriate, all the more so in the current period,” the newspaper Le Parisien reported.
Schiappa, 40, doubled down on her decision to pose for Playboy in a tweet Saturday.
“Defending the right of women to have control of their bodies, that’s everywhere and all the time. In France, women are free. With all due respect to the detractors and hypocrites,” the mom of two wrote.
Schiappa, who has been in government since 2017, is no stranger to controversy.
In 2010, she wrote a book that included sex tips for overweight people, which some critics have lambasted as perpetuating harmful stereotypes, BBC News reported.
Under her anti-harassment law, catcallers could face potential on-the-spot fines of up to $871 .
“What’s key is … that the laws of the French republic forbid insulting, intimidating, threatening and following women in public spaces,” Schiappa said in 2018 when the law was passed.
The Playboy scandal comes at a time when Macron and his government are facing a major backlash over the decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years in an apparent bid to prevent the collapse of France’s pension system.
The pension reform was rammed through in France with the use of Article 49.3 — prominently featured on Schiappa’s chest on the Playboy cover — which grants executive privilege to pass a bill without a parliamentary vote
The unpopular move has led to large-scale strikes organized by France’s powerful labor unions and demonstrations throughout the country, which have seen protesters set buildings on fire, vandalize businesses and clash with police in recent weeks.
The leader of the far-left opposition party La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Melenchon, tweeted, “France is going off the rails,” citing Schiappa’s Playboy cover and Macron’s recent interview with children’s magazine Pif Gadget.
Sandrine Rousseau, a member of parliament from the Green Party, accused Schiappa of disrespecting the French people.
“Women’s bodies should be able to be exposed anywhere, I don’t have a problem with that, but there’s a social context,” she told the French TV channel BFM.
Some of Schaippa’s colleagues, however, applauded her decision to pose for Playboy.
“I want to say that Marlene Schiappa is a courageous female politician who has character and who has her style which is not mine but which I respect,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the outlet CNews.
French Playboy’s editor Jean-Christophe Florentin has also come to Schiappa’s defense, calling her the most “Playboy compatible” government minister because of her stance on women’s issues.
“She has understood that [Playboy] is not a magazine for old ‘machos’ but could be an instrument for the feminist cause,” Florentin told AFP.
The editor touted the publication as not a pornography magazine, but a 300-page book-magazine hybrid “that is intellectual and on trend,” albeit with “a few undressed women” added to the mix.
“But they’re not the majority of the pages,” Florentin stressed.
The Playboy issue featuring Schiappa’s cover will be available on April 8.
With Post wires
