France Reflects On Having No Age Of Sexual Consent, Even For A 10-Year-Old Girl Legally Raped In Many Countries

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Writing for The Atlantic, Marie Doezema zeroes in on a case in France involving an 11-year-old girl. one that 50 years later has sparked a moment of moral and legal reckoning. The event happened in April, 2017, when a 28-year-old-man met an 11-year-old girl in a park in Montmagny, a small town of 14,000 people in northern France. 

After congenial conversation with her that involved no coercion, the man said he would be happy to show the young girl how to kiss. She did go home with the man, and it's not clear from reading the reports when the girl showed the man her schoolbooks to establish her age. The victim says she did; the accused insists that she did not. 

“She thought … that she didn’t have the right to protest, that it wouldn’t make any difference,” the mother told Mediapart, a French investigative site which first reported on the allegations of the case. The accusations were of an adult raping a child—a crime that, in France, can lead to a 20-year prison sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is 15 or younger.

Facts are that the case was not proceeding towards a rape charge.  Initially, the man was charged with “sexual infraction,” a crime punishable with a maximum of five years in jail and a €75,000 fine. Under French law, a charge of rape requires “violence, coercion, threat, or surprise,” even if the victims are age 11 or 12, as the girl in the Montmagny case.

“She was 11 years and 10 months old, so nearly 12 years old,” defense lawyer Marc Goudarzian said. Sandrine Parise-Heideiger, his fellow defense lawyer, added: “We are not dealing with a sexual predator on a poor little faultless goose.”

Brigitte Macron's Elle France September 2017 Cover Has Best Sales In A Decade

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Brigitte Macron's Elle France September 2017 Cover Has Best Sales In A Decade

Brigitte Macron covers the September issue of Elle France, giving her first interview since her husband Emmanuel Macron became president. Once again, Brigitte Macron is forced to talk about the 25-year age difference between her and her husband -- a topic the media is obsessed with. The subject is starting to feel like Hillary Clinton's missing emails. 

We've told the Brigitte Macron story before on AOC. What's noteworthy this morning is the success of putting Mrs. Macron on Elle France's September 2017 cover, lensed by Mark Seliger.

Reports are that Macron's September cover issue is the best selling French Elle issue in the last 10 years. In the first week, the magazine already sold 3 million copies, including subscriptions. The monthly average for Elle France in 2017 was 313 525 copies.

Macron wears a cream-colored Dior blazer on her cover shot and faded Saint Laurent jeans. As always, her signature point-toe stilettos are part of her typically casual, never overdone look. 

When asked if she prefers not to be asked about her style, Mrs. Macron quips, "Why not, if it does some good for the French fashion industry? I'm really into fashion, and there's this fascination the world over around this idea of the French woman."

France Debates New Fashion Model BMI Laws & Pro-Ana Websites

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France Debates New Fashion Model BMI Laws & Pro-Ana Websites

Takedown Of The Supermodels

What the fashion industry has never explained is the reasons why the world’s top models in the late 80s and into the 90s were size 4-6. AOC has written about the topic of size 0 models for years. The downsizing of supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and all the glory girls to today’s size 0 and smaller has never explained.

The closest the industry comes is to acknowledging that their embrace of Kate Moss’ ‘heroin chic’ look, one popularized in the mid-1990s, did make vibrant, healthy-looking girls like Crawford and company suddenly undesirable.

In May 1997 President Bill Clinton accused the US fashion industry of portraying heroin use, coupled with emaciated models, androgynous looks and dark circles under their eyes, as glamorous to sell clothes

The glorification of heroin is not creative, it’s destructive,” Clinton said. “It’s not beautiful, it is ugly. And this is not about art, it’s about life and death.

Clinton’s remarks were prompted by the recent death of DavideSorrenti, brother of Mario, who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 20. In a note of irony, Mario photographed Kate Moss, his girlfriend at the time, in the Calvin Klein ‘heroin chic’ Obsession campaign.

Ines de la Fressange's New Book 'Parisian Chic' Delivers

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DolceTracker| Ines de la Fressange’s new book Parisian Chic: A Style Guide by Ines de la Fressange is already #54 in books at Amazon. Check it out.

Anne’s writing about Ines:

Ines de la Fressange’s New Book ‘Parisian Chic’ Delivers

Ines de la Fressange | Unplugged at Roger Vivier & Jean-Paul Gaultier

Teaser | Inès de la Fressange | Karl Lagerfeld | Can’t Stop the Muses’ | V Magazine #68

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