Marlene Schiappa, 40, isn’t any stranger to controversy and has repeatedly angered rightwingers.

Can posing for Playboy be a feminist assertion? A French authorities minister thinks so and has defended her determination to seem — clothed — on the entrance cowl of the infamous journal.

Marlene Schiappa, a 40-year-old feminist writer who was plucked from obscurity by President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, isn’t any stranger to controversy and has repeatedly angered rightwingers.

But even the prime minister and leftwing critics really feel the minister for the social financial system and associations has made a mistake along with her newest stunt: posing for Playboy to accompany a 12-page interview on ladies’s and homosexual rights in addition to 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.” 

The determination has irritated some colleagues within the authorities which has been battling strikes and more and more violent demonstrations towards plans to boost the retirement age by two years.

The sight of Schiappa carrying designer clothes for a glamour journal was seen by some as sending the unsuitable message, with one particular person quoted as saying they thought it was an April’s Fool joke after they first heard about it.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, solely the second lady to occupy the place, referred to as Schiappa to inform her that it “was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period,” an aide informed AFP on Saturday.

Invité ce matin sur Europe1 le Ministre de l’intérieur @GDarmanin apporte son soutien à @MarleneSchiappa sur sa Une Une de #playboy. Il cite Cookie Dingler : « vous ne me ferez pas dire de mal de Marlène Schiappa (…) être une femme libérée, c’est pas si facile » pic.twitter.com/pz50OoQdls

– Jeanne Baron (@jeannebarontv) April 2, 2023

Greens MP and fellow ladies’s rights activist Sandrine Rousseau, an outspoken critic of the centrist authorities, mentioned: “where is the respect for the French people? 

“People who’re going to must work for 2 years extra, who’re demonstrating, who’re shedding days of wage, who aren’t managing to eat due to inflation?” she told the BFM channel on Saturday. 

“Women’s our bodies ought to be capable to be uncovered wherever, I haven’t got an issue with that, however there is a social context.” 

‘Not soft porn’

Playboy has defended the spread which will appear in its French-language edition.

Schiappa was the “most ‘Playboy suitable'” of government ministers “as a result of she is connected to the rights of girls and he or she has understood that it isn’t {a magazine} for outdated machos however might be an instrument for the feminist trigger,” editor Jean-Christophe Florentin told AFP.

“Playboy isn’t a mushy porn journal however a 300-page quarterly ‘mook’ (a mixture of a ebook and {a magazine}) that’s mental and on pattern,” Florentin added, while admitting there were “nonetheless a couple of undressed ladies however they are not nearly all of the pages.”

Other criticism of Schiappa has focused on the broader issue of the centrist government’s communication strategy.

Macron, who rarely gives interviews to the French press, offered his thoughts on political power and pensions in a long interview published in children’s magazine “Pif, le magazine” last week.

Schiappa, a regular on French TV talk shows, brought in legislation outlawing catcalling and street harassment while serving as equalities minister in 2018.

The mother-of-two was a prolific author and blogger before her career in politics, writing about the challenges of motherhood, women’s health and pregnancy.

She also penned a 2010 book that offered sex tips for the overweight which some critics saw as propagating stereotypes.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)