Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

People Feature
Ribisi rising
Giovanni Ribisi's résumé read like that of every up-and-comer-to-watch this side of John Travolta. Then he attracted the notice of the best directing talents in the business.
By Jessica Hundley
[02/18/00]

Nothing Personal
Analyze this multimillionaire
A chat with the shrink to TV's recently married moneybags; gay guys want to bed Madonna, Everett says; Renée Zellweger tattoos her caboose with whose name? Plus: Aaron Spelling is mad as hell!
By Amy Reiter
[02/18/00]

Nothing Personal
Courtesy flush, please!
Extra! Extra! Put the seat down! Senate reporters forced to use coed loo; "American Pie" man Don McLean gets goopy over Madonna. Plus: The descent of man continues -- Carlos Santana announces his own clothing line.
By Amy Reiter
[02/17/00]

Column
"Sex" and Synanon onstage
The Draconian sexual mores of Mae West's era and the curious past of former cult kid Deborah Swisher turn up the heat in New York theater.
By Cintra Wilson
[02/17/00]

People Feature
Who wants to marry a multimillionaire?
A whole buncha losers, that's who. Married's just another word for nothing left to lose.
By Carina Chocano
[02/16/00]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

A multifarious figure unique to France (the only country in the industrialized world to revere a woman as its national effigy), Marianne originally emerged as an image representing France's liberation from the shackles of monarchic dynasties and of its transformation into a republic. She has since come to represent justice, honor, patrimony, democracy, universal suffrage, religious piety, industry, agriculture, prosperity and patriotism, as well as various other virtues and ideals that have little if anything to do with Laetitia Casta.

Casta's selection as the Marianne of the 21st century was the result of the country's first official nationwide vote, sponsored by the Association of Mayors of France. According to AMF spokeswoman Catherine Doumas, "We didn't know what to expect when we initiated this campaign for a 21st century Marianne. The overwhelming response we got is a sign of how impassioned French citizens and officials are about the Republic and its representations."

Indeed, under the auspices of the AMF, thousands of mayors came together from all over the country to vote. (France has 36,000 mayors for a country the size of Texas.) "The first vote brought us down to five runner-ups," says Doumas. "The second vote was clearly in favor of Casta."

Of the five distinguished runners-up, why did the (mostly male) group of mayors pick the least-educated, least-accomplished woman to represent the lofty values and politically charged symbolism of the French Republic? "Well," suggests Doumas, "perhaps because she's the prettiest. And Marianne is, of course, usually represented as a bust. Casta obviously has the nicest bust of them all."

The figure of Marianne is protean. Her image appears in the form of thousands of sculptures, paintings, tie clips, wall hangings, beer steins, tobacco boxes and greeting cards, not to mention on billions of official French documents, stamps, coins and currency. She is perhaps best known outside France as the buxom, bare-breasted and barefoot revolutionary storming the barricades in Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" -- frock unfurled, bayonet in one hand, French flag in the other, curious red bonnet flapping in a gunpowder wind. With her anonymous French face and her creamy, insurgent breasts, Marianne was of the people and for the people. Until Brigitte Bardot came along.

Explanation: In a country where getting your heater fixed involves legislative and bureaucratic red tape, it is a strange twist of fate that has kept Marianne in a state of official unofficialdom for over 200 years. Since she first appeared in 1792, Marianne, whose name is believed to have originally been a code word for "revolution," was chosen and created in a somewhat ad-hoc fashion by artists, sculptors and city officials in villages all over France. She was the anonymous peasant tilling the land. She was the unassuming, unaristocratic girl next door. She was the cherished figure of political emancipation until a sculptor by the name of Asan decided, in 1969 and as a sort of joke, to make a bust of Brigitte Bardot as Marianne. Bardot-as-Marianne, with her thinly veiled bosom and her perky, oh-la-la nipples, was adopted by the City Hall of a small French village called Thiron-Gardais.

Despite the protestations of certain bureaucrats, Bardot eventually became the de facto symbol of the French Republic. From that point on, Marianne lost her proletarian roots and ironically became the embodiment of France's well-endowed rich and famous. Sixteen years later, Catherine Deneuve was chosen by yet another sculptor and adopted as the country's new Marianne.

Next page | Breasts raised on butter and crème fraîche ...