As part of the promotion of her new album “Heart”, which comes out this Friday, June 11, 2021, on the front page of ELLE magazine on June 4, 2021, singer Clara Luciani has dedicated this cover to all her “executioners of the court of school.” A past that says a lot about the pressure that all women undergo, including those corresponding to the dominant beauty criteria.
“La moche” and “La grande perche”, these were the nicknames of the successful singer Clara Luciani when she was a child. It’s hard to imagine that the one we often relate to its resemblance to the Chanel model and author Caroline de Maigret could one day be considered ugly. White, thin, perfect retro bangs and rock star look tinged with a touch of Parisian chic, the singer of “La Grenade” corresponds to the letter to the canons of beauty in France.
But his height, 1m82 today, seems to have frightened his classmates. The reason ? Being a tall woman is too intimidating for many men, who can feel emasculated by a larger female body than theirs. Toxic masculinity, instilled in boys from an early age, is a reminder that a man’s role is to protect his female partner. Impossible for the prince to be the savior of Sleeping Beauty if she is two heads taller than him. Being a shorter man is also a mocked and devilish scenario.
A privileged self-acceptance
“I would like my story to serve as an example to all those who read me and who doubt them: rejoice in your roughness!”, continues the 28-year-old artist on Facebook. A message a bit disarming in view of its perfect plastic … What about women who live every day with roughness much less accepted than a model size?
The discourse of women with standardized bodies on self-acceptance is not new. Subtracting the body positive movement from fat and racialized activists has even become a juicy business on Instagram (even in bookstores with the recent “anti-complexes” book by former Miss France Malika Ménard and that of her colleague Delphine Wespiser on “being in harmony with your body”). So much so that the 16 million occurrences of the hashtag #bodypositive today on Instagram show mainly white women with normal bodies.