In the February 20 letter are the largely conservative mayors of the French Riviera. “I ask them therefore to have a bit of courage for once in their life and to finally fulfill their duty,” Bardot wrote in her curling schoolgirl script. “I am scandalized that the mayors of France are so utterly sensitive and don’t have the honesty to voice their support for Marine Le Pen, who is one of the frontrunners for the Presidential elections.”
Talk about bombshells!
Brigitte Bardot, the iconic sex symbol-turned-animal rights passionaria, has often lashed out from the seclusion of her Côte d’Azur hideaway against the cruel treatment of animals — her raison d’être since she stepped down from the silver screen four decades ago.
In contrast to her defense of all-things-furry, the 77-year-old Bardot, who has not left her residence in Saint-Tropez for years, rarely says anything positive about her fellow humans. Younger French people no longer tend to think of her as the groundbreaking sexual creature from the 1956-film And God Created Woman, nor do they consider her a particularly persuasive animal rights activist. They largely perceive her to be an off-key old crank whose animal rights arguments devolve into anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rants. French radio interviewers relish in redirecting late-vintage Bardot’s legendary temper, as when they sparked her fury over rumors that Hollywood was developing an unauthorized biopic about her.
So it was something of a surprise when, just two months before the first-round of French presidential elections, the former screen siren brought her star-power to bear on behalf of another human, the popular far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Animal rights are, naturally, part of Bardot’s justification for her support. Le Pen, the screen legend wrote in a hand-written missive that was published in the local newspaper, “defends animals and has the courage to restore to our country, ‘La France’ to the place that it should fill in the world.”
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