Marlene Schiappa, who serves as the secretary of state in charge of the Social and Solidarity Economy in France, made her name by championing legislation to outlaw catcalling and street harassment of women.
Now she’s set to appear in Playboy, the nudie magazine. One photo released from the April 8 edition shows Schiappa in a low-cut white bodysuit that exposes her cleavage and spread legs.
Four photos will be accompanied by 12 pages of text, in which Schiappa, 40, will muse on women’s rights and feminism. The mother of two defended her decision to pose for Playboy in a Twitter post on Saturday.
“Defending the right of women to have control of their bodies, that’s everywhere and all the time. In France, women are free. With all due respect to the detractors and hypocrites,” she wrote.
So she’s appearing in Playboy in various states of undress after spearheading a law to ban harassment of women? Talk about hypocrites.
France’s moronic government strikes again:
Marlène Schiappa, 🇫🇷 Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, in charge of the Social and Solidarity Economy and Associative Life, poses on the front page of Playboy. pic.twitter.com/Jdp5CVag2y
— Daniel Foubert 🇵🇱 (@d_foubert) April 2, 2023
Under her anti-harassment law, men who catcall women could face immediate fines of up to $871.
“What’s key is … that the laws of the French republic forbid insulting, intimidating, threatening and following women in public spaces,” Schiappa said in 2018 when the law was passed, the New York Post reported.
Some female leaders in France were not at all happy with Schiappa’s decision to appear in the girlie magazine.
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Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told Schiappa that her decision “was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period,” the BBC reported.
France has been in the throes of revolution after President Emmanuel Macron unilaterally raised the retirement age by two years. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, and garbagemen have refused to pick up trash for weeks.
Macron rammed the age hike through using Article 49.3 — which just so happens to be featured on Schiappa’s cleavage in the Playboy photo. That article grants executive privilege to pass a bill without a vote in parliament.
One politician complained about the politician’s tin ear.
“We are in the middle of a social crisis, there is a subject on the maintenance of order, there are people between life and death, and I have the impression of a smokescreen,” said Sandrine Rousseau, deputy to the National Assembly for Paris’s 9th constituency.
“Where is the respect of the French people, of the people who are going to have to work two more years, who demonstrate, who lose days of wages, who cannot eat because of inflation,” she said, according to Le Parisien.
“Women’s bodies should be able to be exposed anywhere, I don’t have a problem with that, but there’s a social context,” she said.
And maybe, just maybe, appearing scantily clad in a nudie magazine isn’t the best approach to sell policy.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.