Person of the week: Schiappa
“Playboy” scandal should help Macron in need
By Wolfram Weimer
4/4/2023 8:34 am
Mass protests shake France. Suddenly, the cover of “Playboy” causes a stir: a minister is a cover girl and triggers a very French scandal. The responsible pension reform minister had previously come out as gay. Macron finds the distractions strikingly convenient.
The current cover of the Parisian “Playboy” causes a stir in France. The reason: State Secretary Marlène Schiappa is on the cover. She was First Minister for Equality from 2017 to 2020. Today she is State Secretary for Social and Solidarity Economy and gives the Herren-Magazine a revealing interview about feminism and women’s rights.
Marlène Schiappa is State Secretary for Social and Solidarity Economy.
(Photo: picture alliance / abaca)
The slippery process causes a scandal and heated debates. Conservatives find it embarrassing for a member of the government to appear in Playboy like this. Even Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the interview was “not appropriate”. Left and Green criticize the “Playboy” appearance as a mockery of the French in difficult social times. Green politician Sandrine Rousseau says: “Where is the respect for the French people?” People in France are currently demonstrating en masse because they are being asked to work two more years; moreover, many do not know how to put food on the table in the face of inflation.
Feminists, on the other hand, consider Schiappa’s media platform to be treason. The fact that a committed feminist like Schiappa should use “Playboy”, who has been criticized by the emancipation movement for decades because of his image of women, as her mouthpiece is humiliating and cheap sensationalism. In fact, Schiappa has been feminist for many years, she is the founder and chair of the network Maman travaille (“Mama works”) and the author of numerous equality books. In her government office, she initiated a “law to strengthen the fight against sexual and sexist violence”, which came into force in 2018 and is also called “Loi Schiappa” (le loi means “the law”). Since then, sexist insults have been considered a criminal offense and sexual intercourse with persons under the age of 16 is considered rape.
Is it all just “distraction”?
Schiappa countered the wide-ranging criticism offensively: “I defend the right of women to do what they want with their bodies: anywhere and anytime.” And further: “In France, women are free. Whether it annoys the backward-looking and hypocrites or not.” She gets support from her direct superior, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. Schiappa has style and character. “Being a liberated woman is not that easy.”
President Emmanuel Macron has so far been silent about the process, but is likely to be secretly happy about the wild debate. Because the sudden change of subject in the French public takes pressure off his political agenda. Suddenly, the violent conflicts surrounding Macron’s pension reform are no longer the first news from the republic. Schiappa’s environment speaks of “disruptive communication” and emphasizes her “boldness”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, opposition politician from the Nupes left-wing alliance, sees through the intention and is already complaining that the “Playboy” cover is purely a political “distraction”. Macron’s government is in a “dead end” with the pension reform and the biggest social conflict in 50 years. So they started diversionary tactics.
In fact, the “Playboy” action is part of a series of strange media appearances by the Macron government during the crisis. A few days ago, President Macron gave an interview in the comic book “Pif Gadget” that was felt to be out of place. In addition, Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt, who was controversial because of the pension reform, campaigned for sympathy with a cover photo in what appeared to be a forced coming out in the gay magazine “Têtu”.
Sex as a stylistic device of power
Ending crises by setting the agenda and changing the subject is a tried and tested means, especially in modern media democracies. Sex and the battle between the sexes are ideally suited for France, after all the libertinism of French society is a question of identity. Since the days of the Marquise de Pompadour, eroticism and power have formed a special couple in France. Louis XIV, who claimed to embody the state, had 17 children with numerous wives, his successor Louis XV. to more than 20, counting only the recognized offspring and the number of mistresses reached company strength.
In France more than anywhere else, kings, presidents and those in power have striven to always be “hommes à femmes”, men of women, visible figures of virility. For years, President François Mitterrand brought up an illegitimate daughter at state expense in the elegant 16th arrondissement, Nicolas Sarkozy staged his swap of women from Ms. Sarkozy to actress and singer Carla Bruni, President François Hollande, in turn, chose his girlfriend Valérie Trierweiler as a not quite official First Lady, before he rode his motor scooter to his amorous tryst with actress Julie Gayot at night.
President Jacques Chirac, whose infidelities earned him the nickname “Monsieur five minutes, including the shower,” nevertheless managed to win re-election in 2002. President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing himself fueled the rumor mill when he wrote a novel and titled it “The Princess and the President”. Although he then assured that the story in the book was invented, there was wide speculation about Giscard d’Estaing’s affair with Princess Diana, who later died in an accident.
Schiappa turns the game upside down
Former Prime Minister (2017 to 2020) and Macron supporter Édouard Philippe recently wrote a book entitled “In the Shadows”. There he looks behind the scenes of political life and spreads quotes that would mean political death in other countries. So he has someone say about the spokeswoman of a party: “Marilyn has small breasts. I don’t usually like it that way. My thing, I admit, are rather full breasts. Not oppressive and saggy, no, not that heavy, that they hang, but somehow raised.”
In their book “Sexus Politicus” the authors Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois analyze the extroverted sexual behavior of French politicians. Her thesis on the peculiarity of French political culture: In France, a successful politician is a seductive politician, he loves and is loved.
It is precisely this principle of power men that Marlène Schiappa is demonstratively turning around, thereby gaining visibility and power of interpretation. And quite incidentally, she defused her boss Macron the social explosives of the March unrest.