French minister Marlene Schiappa poses for Playboy magazine, told ‘not appropriate’

Can posing for Playboy be a feminist statement? A French government minister thinks so and has defended her decision to appear — clothed — on the front cover of the notorious magazine.

Marlene Schiappa, a 40-year-old feminist author who was plucked from obscurity by President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, is no stranger to controversy and has repeatedly angered right-wingers.

But even the prime minister and left-wing critics feel the minister for the social economy and associations has made a mistake with her latest stunt: posing for Playboy to accompany a 12-page interview on women's and gay rights apart from abortion.

"Defending the right of women to do what they want with their bodies: everywhere and all the time," Schiappa wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "In France, women are free. Whether it annoys the retrogrades and hypocrites or not."

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The decision has irritated some colleagues in the government which has been battling strikes and increasingly violent demonstrations against plans to raise the retirement age by two years.

The sight of Schiappa wearing designer dresses for a glamour magazine was viewed by some as sending the wrong message, with one person quoted as saying they thought it was an April's Fool joke when they first heard about it.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, only the second woman to occupy the position, called Schiappa to tell her that it "was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period," an aide told the media on Saturday.

Greens MP and fellow women's rights activist Sandrine Rousseau, an outspoken critic of the centrist government, said: "Where is the respect for the French people?

"People who are going to have to work for two years more, who are demonstrating, who are losing days of salary, who aren't managing to eat because of inflation?" she told the BFM channel on Saturday.

"Women's bodies should be able to be exposed anywhere, I don't have a problem with that, but there's a social context."

Agence France-Presse