Women have right to pose nude, says French minister after Playboy shoot controversy

French minister and feminist Marlene Schiappa, who recently posed for Playboy, sparking controversy, said to the magazine she believed that women have the right to pose nude if they want to.

Schiappa, who is currently the country's minister for the social economy and associations, was featured in Playboy's French edition this month which will hit shelves on Thursday, although her photos were already leaked in the French media.

On Wednesday, the minister received fresh criticism from her cabinet colleagues for her stunt. In the photographs which will accompany the 12-page long interview, the minister strikes various poses in revealing outfits ofblue, red and white colour of the French tricolour.

“If some (women) want to pose in a men’s magazine and enjoy it, I think that we shouldn’t blame them,” said Schiappa, while speaking to the magazine.

The minister called Pamela Anderson her inspiration after the US glamour model said that shooting for Playboy had been “an act of emancipation”.

“Like the Miss France. If they enjoy winning a beauty contest, I find that great too and we should support them,” Schiappa said.

The interview includes various innuendo-laden questions like “is politics an aphrodisiac?”and talks about the minister's past as an erotic novelist and author who wrote on issues like the female orgasm.

Some colleagues of the minister were left aghast by the interview's timing which came when France is going through a major political crisis and battling multiple strikes and violent protests over the increase in the retirement age.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had called Schiappa to inform her that the unauthorised shoot was “not at all appropriate”, meanwhile, Equalities Minister Isabelle Rome broke the magazine's cover to criticise the initiative.

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“I wonder to myself: why would you choose Playboy to try to advance the cause of women when this magazine is a concentration of sexist stereotypes? It’s all about the culture of women as objects,” she said while speaking to the Figaro newspaper.

A former magistrate, Rome said that “when you are a minister, you have responsibilities” as recalled how Playboy’s founder Hugh Hefner had faced accusations of sexual assault.

Schiappa has said that she does not repent attracting the limelight in her six-year political career. “It’s an advantage, on the contrary. Because people say that politics has become colourless, that everyone resembles one another … I don’t resemble anyone else,” she said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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