French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has come under fire after suggesting last night that naked breasts were a symbol of the liberties of the French Republic, as opposed to the Muslim headscarf.
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One historian said, however, that Marianne was an allegory and the use of her naked breast was “just an artistic code” and therefore nothing to do with femininity.
A French court has overturned a ban on burkinis issued in Cannes – the first in a series of local bans on the Muslim full-body swimwear this summer that set off a heated controversy at home and a wave of outrage overseas.
But in a sign of the divisions within the Socialist government on the issue, Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said the “proliferation” of burkini bans “was not a welcome development”.
Valls defended the ban, deeming burkinis “not compatible with the values of the French republic” and claiming they represented the “enslavement of women”. However, several French mayors have continued to enforce the bans regardless, CNN reported on Monday.
Controversy over “burkini bans”, imposed in a number of the country’s cities, resorts and communes, heightened after photographs emerged showing four police officers forcing a woman on a beach in Nice to remove her burkini.
One of the most famous images of Marianne, painted in the 19th century by Eugène Delacroix, sees her leading revolutionary forces, with a torn dress and a flag raised in her hand. She was not veiled because she is free.
Radical revolutionaries would espouse the naked Marianne and more conservative republicans the clothed figure, Mathilde Larrere explained.
A right-wing French mayor has vowed to continue with the burkini ban despite France’s top court ruling the restriction is illegal. Interestingly, she was portrayed in different ways, sometimes with her head covered, other times with her breasts exposed or covered too.
Historian Nicolas Lebourg told French newspaper Liberation that Mr Valls appeared to have confused Marianne with the earlier 1830 Eugene Delacroix painting of Liberty Leading The People, where the figure has her breasts uncovered, the Guardian said.
A spokesman for Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “It’s frankly a stupid reaction to what we are… facing, in terms of terrorist attacks”.
Other towns followed suit but complaints were lodged in French courts.
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The spokesman said the United Nations rights office understood the grief and anger generated by the attacks.
