How Bardot Influenced Sex

Brigitte Bardot, 75 today, did more than serve as a siren of the sexual revolution—she connected France inextricably with the libido. Plus, view our gallery of women she inspired.

France is a woman. It isn’t just that the nation is referred to as la France; the symbolic embodiment of the nation is a mythical lady named Marianne, a sort of unofficial patron saint who struggles for liberty, equality, and brotherliness. Oh, and she’s usually portrayed as being terrifically sexy.

Click Image to View Our Gallery of Women Bardot Inspired

Whenever Marianne appeared on statues, stamps, and currency for hundreds of years, the muse was either the artist’s imagination or some anonymous (and often topless) beauty. That changed in 1969, when the nation’s sexiest woman, Brigitte Bardot, was chosen as the first celebrity model for Marianne. It was a natural choice given that Bardot represented a young, vibrant, and rebellious France. Her rustic natural beauty combined with a shockingly unapologetic libido in her early films to propel a global myth about French beauty and sexuality that endures to this day. Back then the often-unclad Bardot’s underlying message might be summarized as: Follow me to the sexual revolution!

Bardot echoed her country in other ways. Her characters were often capricious and self-centered, not entirely unlike French leaders, who repeatedly insisted that France be allowed to play by different rules under the guise of the “French exception.” Bardot, who turns 75 on Monday, may have been a sexual icon—and sometimes mistaken for a feminist icon—but she hardly carved a path that most other women could follow. Who else had a derrière like the one that inspired a character in the 1956 film And God Created Woman to say, “Her ass is a song”?

• Gallery: Bardot Through the YearsFrance has been radically transformed since Bardot’s prime—especially in the last decade or so—and so has its feminine ideal. In a country where glass ceilings long prevented women from reaching the upper echelons of power and women only earned the right to vote during World War II, Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal earned 47 percent of the vote in 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy, the man who defeated Royal, initially named seven women to his 15-member council of ministers, and elevated women well beyond the traditionally accepted “soft” ministry positions to heavyweight offices in justice, finance, and the interior. The head of France’s largest employer’s organization is female, as is the current Socialist Party leader. Women remain underrepresented in parliament, but there are now powerful female role models such as the Hillary Clintonesque Michèle Alliot-Marie, the former minister of defense and current minister of justice, or the competent and witty minister of the economy, Christine Lagarde, ranked by Forbes last month as the 17th most powerful woman in the world.

But outside of the corridors of power, it is true that women still face plenty of pressure to show their wares. Take France’s national women’s soccer team, which has long struggled to attract fans and secure a television deal (like the women’s teams of some other European countries). Several players recently posed topless to broaden the team’s fan base—and they’d never had so many interview requests!