Risqué Business

A couple weeks ago, she started popping up in some Métro stations. Now I can hardly take the train anywhere without seeing her oiled, tanned, almost completely naked body. It’s not a raving exhibitionist nor poster for a porno, but rather the Galeries Lafayette’s current life-size ad for its bathing suit collection.

Well, it might as well be porn. I’ve had to brush past more than one man blatantly ogling the model in the ad. She lies in profile, gripping a triangle-bikini top to her substantially bare chest, the bikini bottom dangling seductively from her toes. She should be bronzing on the beaches of Rio, yet here she is, brazenly exposed in the Paris underground. Wait, I could’ve sworn this was an ad for women’s bathing suits, not for beer or power tools. Or is this the paragon of seductive beauty that French women aspire to?

My workday took me past the Galeries Lafayette today, where I saw the ad grossly magnified on the edifice of the department store, demanding the attention of passers-by, in an even more aggressive fashion than when Marky Mark graced the giant Calvin Klein underwear ad at Times Square. It’s an overwhelming testament to the French’s casual attitude toward sexuality. After all, this is a country in which nudie magazines are not hidden in the very back corner of a newsstand, but are blown up to ten times the magazine cover size and flaunted on the kiosk’s exterior to beckon customers—and some network television programs feature what is virtually soft-core porn.

Yes, the French are far less prudish than us Americans. But lest you believe in the now-clichéd topless beaches of the Côte d’Azur, take it from les français (and my one allemande student)—the Germans are even more relaxed about sexuality, as many of them apparently love to be nude. For what it’s worth.