French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, an outspoken critic of traditional Muslim dress for women, responded to brewing controversy over burkini bans in the south of France on Monday by telling a crowd at a government rally that naked breasts are a better symbol for the country, the Guardian reported.
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A Nice court yesterday overturned a ban in Cannes on the grounds it violated fundamental liberties.
The country’s highest administrative court ruled to suspend the burkini ban last week, after dozens of towns and cities across the country had imposed fines on women who wore the full-body swimsuits in public.
Valls used the bare breasts of Marianne, a national symbol of the French Republic, to make a point about what he finds wrong with the burkini’s presence in France. She then posted a series of images showing that Marianne was not always bare-breasted, noting that she is often wearing a Phrygian cap, itself a head covering, albeit one that symbolizes freedom. “That is the republic!” he said at a Socialist Party meeting, Le Monde reports.
Ms Mathilde Larrere, an expert on the French Revolution, said Marianne was an allegory and the use of her naked breasts was “just an artistic code” and had nothing to do with femininity, BBC said.
The historian Nicolas Lebourg told French newspaper Libération that Valls appeared to have confused Marianne with the earlier 1830 Delacroix painting of Liberty Leading the People, where the figure has her breasts uncovered. Interestingly, she was portrayed in different ways, sometimes with her head covered, other times with her breasts exposed or covered too.
The bans grew increasingly controversial as images circulated online of some Muslim women being ordered to remove body-concealing garments on French Riviera beaches. The figure of Marianne officially became a symbol of the French Republic in 1848, after the fall of the monarchy. She is also represented on Government documents and engraved on French euro coins.
Valls has been a vocal supporter of banning the burqini, which he described as “not compatible with the values of France and the Republic”.
The inference that bare breasts were a symbol of France while the Muslim headscarf was problematic sparked scorn from politicians and derision from historians and feminists.
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“A new totalitarianism is rising, an islamist totalitarianism with one aim-to fracture democracy, curb individual liberty and install a social order of male domination over women in society”, he said.
