FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS French Secretary of State Marlène Schiappa has decided to pose on the cover and inside pages of Playboy. The forty-year-old in charge of “Social, Solidarity and Environmental Economy” in the government of Elisabeth Borne, after having dealt with gender equality for a long time, gave a 12-page interview “on women’s freedom and feminism, politics and literature », specify sources from his ministerial cabinet, adding that Schiappa «is dressed and wearing a long white dress».
The news was revealed by the Parisien, which cites the perplexity of a ministerial adviser: «It doesn’t matter how she is dressed, it’s crazy. Such a thing is not possible in the midst of the social crisis on pensions ». In the cover photo, that will be released on April 8, the deputy minister looks towards the horizon behind the famous Playboy logo adapted with the blue, white and red colors of the French flag.
Schiappa’s entourage thus responded to the first criticisms and the next ones to come: «We have always claimed the fact that we speak to everyone and have a unconventional communicationAnd. After all, this is one of the reasons for the numerous support enjoyed by the secretary of state. Marlene Schiappa is the only one in government capable of responding to a magazine like Playboy, and is the first politician to appear on its cover.
In the interview Marlene Schiappa talks about the freedom of women in Afghanistan and recalls that France defends the right to abortion but also LGBT+ rights on the international scene”.
The publisher of the French edition of PlayboyJean-Christophe Florentin says that «Marlène Schiappa is the most Playboy-compatible politician because she is closely linked to women’s rights and has understood that Playboy is no longer a magazine for old men chauvinist but instead can be a tool of the feminist cause». The publisher adds that Playboy is no longer an erotic magazine as before but a «mook» (halfway between book and magazine) quarterly of almost 300 pages. “There are still some undressed girls but she is not the main thing.”
It is not the first time that Marlène Schiappa has claimed her freedom of expression on issues such as women’s rights and sexuality. In 2010, well before entering government for the first time in 2017, the Parisian of Corsican origins wrote Osez l’amour des rondes “Dare to love prosperous women”, a book that denounced contemporary aesthetic canons and the injunction to be thin. It has long been associated with erotic books written under the pseudonym Marie Minelli, but later explained that she had written only a few, sometimes in collaboration with other authors. Among the titles of which Marlène Schiappa claims to be the author with the name of Marie Minelli, Osez la première fois “Dare for the first time” intended for younger girls, and Osez l’orgasme féminin, “Dare the female orgasm”, written when he was in government.
