And God Created Bardot... posted 9/22/2009 11:11:24 AM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse

eastham

Seventy-five years ago today, Brigitte Bardot was born in the fashionable 16th arrondissement of Paris, one of two daughters born to Anne-Marie and Louis Bardot. Along with her sister Marie-Jeanne, Brigitte studied ballet and was determined to become a prima ballerina.

But at the age of sixteen, a friend of her mother’s took Brigitte’s career in a different direction by securing young Brigitte the cover of French Elle. The magazine cover captivated the young director Roger Vadim, who married Brigitte after she turned 18. In 1952, Bardot was cast in her second film (the first movie was cancelled and never made), Crazy for Love. A star was born. The star went supernova in 1956 when Vadim directed his wife in And God Created Woman.

The film was a huge success, but also a huge scandal, both here and in France. In the US, movie house owners were arrested for screening the film. In France, Paris-Match blasted Bardot as “immoral from head to toe.” (My how times change! Recently Paris Match’s cover boasted a bare-breasted Sharon Stone.) This bourgeois affront to Bardot was parried by one of France’s most noted feminist intellectuals, Simone de Beauvoir. In her most famous essay, “The Lolita Syndrome,” de Beauvoir argued that Bardot was provocative, but never lewd, and was the first and most liberated woman of post-war France. Fortunately for us all, de Beauvoir and Bardot prevailed.

In 1973 at the relatively young age of 39, Bardot retired to the South of France. She was always indifferent to her superstar status. And unlike her contemporaries, such as Sophia Loren, Bardot has not gone under the knife. She has at her disposal the formidable asset of French women, she just doesn’t give a hoot what others think. In our era of reality television and tell-all public confessions, that is a rather refreshing reversal, n’est pas?

So, Brigitte, joyeux anniversaire et merci!

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