About twenty members of FEMEN protest on Sunday, September 13 inside the Musée d'Orsay against the veto of a woman because of her cleavageDPA via Europa Press / Europa Press
The Orsay Museum is in the middle of a controversy after the guards denied entry to a Parisian university student, last Tuesday, because they considered her cleavage was excessive.
The woman, identified only with her virtual user Jeavnne, revealed the event in an open letter published on her social networks.
The institution apologized on Wednesday, but the complaint had already gone viral with thousands of messages expressing solidarity with the student.
On Sunday, the protest was visible even in the corridors of the museum, when a score of activists from the feminist collective Femen entered the center, posing as tourists.
Once inside the center, they undressed and displayed messages against the objectification of women on their naked torsos while cheering "The obscenity is in your eyes."
The complaint has even added the support of the former Secretary of State for Equality and Deputy Minister of Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, through a message on the Internet.
The text where the Parisian recounts her version of the incident relates that the Musée d'Orsay workers asked her to cover herself with a jacket that she carried with her.
She refused at first but ended up accepting: "I felt defeated, forced, ashamed, I have the impression that everyone is looking at my breasts, that I am nothing more than my breasts."
The woman also points out that the museum's paintings and sculptures show both men and women with little or no clothing, which she calls contradictory.
"Your double standards should not be an obstacle to my right to access culture and knowledge," says the end of the letter.
She also includes a photo of herself in what she calls "the dress of discord."
Lettre ouverte @MuseeOrsay
Ci-joint la robe de la discorde (photo prize quatre heures plus tôt) pic.twitter.com/FTIXQKsdRZ
- Tô '(@jeavnne) September 9, 2020
Thousands of users on social media have since shown their support in different ways.
Some have used pieces from the museum's collection that show nudes, such as
Édouard Manet's
Breakfast on the Grass
and
Gustave Courbet's
Origin of the World
, to indicate what is perceived as a contradiction.
Others took to Twitter the hashtag # Lundi14Septembre to post photos in support of the student, in many cases through selfies with clothes that, some suggested, would also have prevented them from accessing the Orsay Museum.