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French Feminism

15th June 2011 by Helena 3 Comments  

This morning as I was battling on the exercise bike, I watched a brilliant programme on the French channel Arte about the feminst group ‘Ni Putes, Ni Soumises’ (not whores, nor submissives). Obviously as it was all in French I hardly understood any of it, but what did strike me was how elegant French feminists are. They wear lip gloss, nice clothes and have expensive hair cuts. In fact, they look just like most French women.

Maybe the days when feminists had obligatory hairy armpits and wore hideous sandals are over? Perhaps now that we (I use the term loosely) have made such great strides we can go back to looking like most women actually want to look, which is feminine and, well, beautiful?

In the book Persepolis that I blogged about a few weeks ago there is a brilliant cartoon where the author shows how ridiculous rules about how you look keep women from thinking about what is really important. So if you are worried abut being arrested because your scarf is not on the right way, or your abaya is too clingy, or your lip gloss too obvious, then you are unlikely to have the time to worry about your right to vote, or talk to a male or complain about the regime that is oppressing you.

So now that feminists can go back to high heels, waxed legs and mascara, will it give them less or more time to feminise? Is that even a word? Who knows, but at least I have time to think about it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011


Filed Under: France, Human Rights, Women, blog --> Tagged With: feminism, french

3 thoughts on French Feminism

  • Kate says:
    16th June 2011 at 7:48 am

    Whereas in the UK we have just had the SlutWalk as a showcase for modern feminism…

  • Pascale says:
    16th June 2011 at 12:25 pm

    In New Zealand, the “real woman” plays rugby, and looks like an Amazonian, fit for the Smithsonian with a caveman at her side, and a club at her feet……. O_o

  • Nina says:
    18th June 2011 at 1:37 pm

    I have to comment, as I just today came back from being two weeks in Antibes. There really is something about French women. They really seem to know how to look very elegant and even chic. But not all of them. No, of course not. A must read is ex model Ines de la Fressagne’s stylebook,
    Parisian chic: aStyle Guide. I am interested to know of it takes to break a bank to look good, or perhaps there are some ways to do it. I hope not.

    Remarkable is that women’s undewear department, no under such name in one of those big departmentstores. It is seduction department.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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