France
is submerged in a social and political conflict, which has led 3.5 million people to march demanding the withdrawal of the pension reform and in the midst of strong violence.
Isolated, fragile, top-down,
President Emmanuel Macron has asked his cabinet for unity, solidity and seriousness while 72 percent of the French have lost confidence in him.
One of his ministers decided to interpret the request according to her prestige needs.
The glamorous and feminist Marlène Schiappa
, the Minister of Social Economy, will appear on the cover of the next issue of Playboy in France.
At least it is believed that she will not pose nude.
The cover of the magazine "Playboy" that generated the controversy.
The minister to Playboy
Schiappa, 40, a high-profile minister long seen as
Macron's feminist figurehead
, posed in a white dress against the background of the French flag, for the magazine founded in the United States by Hugh Hefner in 1953.
He gave the quarterly magazine an interview, to be published in 12 pages.
As if it were a pure coincidence, it will appear on Thursday, April 6.
Just the day that France will be paralyzed
by another national union strike
, demanding the complete withdrawal of the pension reform, which his government opposes.
It is believed to be the largest protest demonstration .
Marlene Schiappa (right) during a campaign event.
Photo: AFP
This French writer, essayist and politician will answer Playboy questions about
women's rights and the LGBT community
, according to her assistants.
She managed to infuriate Macron and his boss, Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, when she found out.
Her supporters say she deserves praise for taking the feminist struggle into a bastion of reactionary sexism.
Prime Minister Eisabeth Borne
disagrees.
Borne, 61, the second woman to hold the post in France, phoned Schiappa to tell him the interview
was "not entirely appropriate
, especially at the present time."
The premier, who is fighting to save her own skin amid claims she is to blame for the widely loathed pension reform, told the media that she had
given Schiappa a rebuke.
The magazine will be published on April 6.
The photos were taken fifteen days ago and will be on the cover of the magazine this week.
But the negotiations lasted three months.
Playboy's French editor-in-chief Jean Christophe Florentin declined to admit if she will pose nude.
"What if I can say that he has made
totally amazing poses
for a minister," Jean Christophe Florentin said today on Europe 1 radio.
The prime minister
was unaware
that her official had posed for Playboy until the news leaked.
Schiappa was immediately banned
from promoting the interview in the media
.
But the feminist minister believes that she has the right to do what she wants with her body.
Some photos were leaked on BFMTV television and Le Parisien revealed that she posed for Playboy.
Some photos were leaked on BFMTV television.
An inappropriate interview?
Schiappa's initiative has divided the cabinet, prompting accusations that he is demoting the ministerial post.
The interview and photos have left Macron facing claims he
is losing control of the government
, as protests continue over his plan to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.
Schiappa's hours
seem numbered
in Macron's cabinet, which ignores the marches against him and
does not want to talk to unionists.
A feminist biography
This Parisian born on November 18, 1982, married and separated from Cédrid Bruguiere, comes from a Lambertist Trotskyist family, which supports Jean Luc Mélenchon.
She created the blog
“Mama trabaja”
, which presents itself as the first network of active women, which becomes an association for parental equality and the reconciliation between professional and private life.
Under the pseudonym Marie Minelli, she wrote a collection dedicated to the vulgarization of sexual practices in the La Musardine edition.
In 2001 she appeared in the municipal elections of Mans, without adhering to the socialist party.
She wins and becomes deputy to the mayor.
In the En Marcha movement, Marléne made different presentations of Emmanuel Macron at campaign locations in 2017. He elected her to the national investiture commission, in charge of choosing the candidates
for the legislative elections
for the Republic on the March.
She then she was appointed Secretary of State for equality between men and women.
The
Schiappa Law
, "for harassment in the street and extending the prescription of sexual crimes against minors", is probably his best known work.
It was unanimously approved in the Senate and the Assembly and promulgated in 2018.
Opinions on Schiappa
Many ministers, already reeling from the backlash against the pension plan, accused Schiappa of failing to heed the president's call for his government to
show "seriousness."
One said: "Several of us couldn't believe it! I thought it was April Fool's Day in advance."
Another added: "Being a minister requires
a bit of dignity
."
Opposition politicians were
quick to smell blood,
drawing a parallel between Schiappa and Macron, 45, who surprised by giving an interview to Pif,
a children's comic
, last month to make announcements.
Some suggested that his communication methods indicated that Macron was
losing his ability to discern.
Schiappa hit back at her critics, tweeting that it was necessary to “defend the right of women to do what they want with their bodies…everywhere and all the time.
In France, women are free
, whatever the retrogrades and hypocrites say."
Jean-Christophe Florentin, who edits the French version of Playboy, insisted that the magazine was no longer just interested in the centerfold.
"Playboy is not a soft-core magazine, but
a 300-page quarterly
(a mix of a book and a magazine), which is highbrow and fashionable," he said.
She added that "there were still some naked women, but they're not on most pages."
He said that Schiappa had "understood that
it is not a magazine for old machos
, but that it could be an instrument for the feminist cause."
The "sapiosexual"
When Macron arrived at the Elysee Palace in 2017 promising to revamp French politics, he appointed a cabinet of civil society figures, including Schiappa, an author and feminist activist then largely unknown to voters.
It has now become a household name across the country.
Rarely out of the headlines, Schiappa once described herself as
"a sapiosexual":
someone who finds intelligence sexually attractive.
Prisca Thévenot, a leading deputy in Macron's centrist coalition, expressed her support for Schiappa.
"Is Playboy magazine known for promoting women's rights? I don't think so. So it's important that we can also address these issues in this magazine. It's not about posing nude but about addressing important issues
.
"
Marine Le Pen, 54, a candidate for the populist National Rally in last year's presidential election, said: "When the president gives an interview to Pif in the midst of a major social and political crisis, ministers feel free to do what they want".
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 71, who was the presidential candidate for the radical left party France Insoumise, saw Schiappa's interview as an attempt to
divert public attention from the
pension crisis.
"Macron's camp is at a dead end, in the
biggest social conflict in the
country's history in 50 years and they are throwing all kinds of little distractions," he said.
Last month, Schiappa announced that she and Cédric Bruguière, her second husband, with whom she has two children, were getting divorced after meeting the head of a French mutual health insurance company at the UN in New York in December.
Paris, correspondent
ap
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